Question

Using .htaccess all addresses are rewritten to index.php

Index.php needs to then work out which file to include. At the moment it explodes on the ‘/’ and performs a foreach to work out which file. This is causing errors.

First we get the URI.

If there is one address eg. localhost/next-page then we want to include a file with that name and the extension PHP include('content/'.$post.'.php'); and give global variables for $table as 'PAGES' and $post as 'next-page'

If there are two then the first should be considered the $table and the second the $post, and the file to include should be include('content/single-'.$post.'.php');

How do we do this?

Answer 1

First you need to isolate the relevant part of the URL (in this case that’s probably the path, although without your rewrite rule we don’t know). Then:

$parts = explode('/', $path);
switch(count($parts)) {
    case 1:
        // set your globals (why are you using globals????)
        include('content/'.$parts[0].'.php');
        break;
    case 2:
        // do whatever you need with $parts[0] and $parts[1]
        break;
    // etc
}

If there’s significant similarity between some cases, you can allow a fall-through from one case to the next after doing some preliminary work to normalize the situation, e.g.

    case 1:
        array_unshift($parts, 'PAGES'); // now $parts will have two elements
        // intentional fall-through
    case 2:
        // do whatever you need with $parts[0] and $parts[1]
        break;

Finally: if there’s lots of stuff you need to do with the items inside $parts, you can give them names to make the code more readable using the list construct:

    case 2:
        list($table, $post) = $parts;
        // carry on as before but now $table == $parts[0] and $post == $parts[1]