Question

Possible Duplicate:
PHP passing parameters via URL

I know that if you have a page www.domain.com/?id=ABC you can get the ABC in the index.php file using a

$_GET['id'];

My question is how does a bit.ly/ABC can give the ABC to their php file without having an ?id=ABC in the path?

Answer 1

In theory they do actually have ?id=ABC (or whatever their $_GET-parameter may be called), however it’s being “hidden” via mod_rewrite.

A simple example of how their rewrite could be:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9]+)?$ index.php?id=$1 [NC,L]

This would mean that yourdomain.com/ANYTHINGhere123ThatsAnAlphaNumeric would pass on the value after the slash to your $_GET['id'].

Hope this helps out!