have different static url in dynamic page

Question

I have a website where each person has his personal profile. I would like to have static URL like mywebsite/user1, mywebsite/user2, but actually I would remain in the same page and change the content dynamically. A reason is that when I open the site I ask to a database some data, and I don't want to ask it each time I change page. I don't like url like mywebsite?user=1

Is there a solution?

Thank you

[EDIT better explenation]

I have a dynamic page that shows the user profile of my website. So the URL is something like http://mywebsite.me?user=2 but i would like to have a static link, like http://mywebsite.me/user2name

Why I want this? Because it's easy to remember and write, and because i can change dynamically the content of the page, without asking each time data to my database (i need some shared info in all the pages. info are the same for all the pages)

Answer 1

Yes there are solutions to your problem!

The first solution is server dependend. I am a little unsure how this works on an IIS server but it's quiet simple in Apache. Apache can take directives from a file called .htaccess. The .htaccess file needs to be in the same folder as your active script to work. It also needs the directive AllowOverride All and the module mod_rewrite loaded in the main server configuration. If you have all this set up you need to edit your .htaccess file to contain the following

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^mywebsite/([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?user=$1 [L]

This will allow you to access mywebsite/index.php?user=12 with mywebsite/12. A beginner guide to mod_rewrite.

You could also fake this with only PHP. It will not be as pretty as the previous example but it is doable. Also, take into concideration that you are working with user input so the data is to be concidered tainted. The user needs to access the script via mywebsite/index.php/user/12.

<?php
    $request = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
    $request = explode($request, '/'); // $request[0] will contain the name of the .php file
    $user[$request[1]] = $request[2];

    /* Do stuff with $user['user'] */
?>

These are the quickest way I know to acheive what you want.

Answer 2

First off, please familiarise yourself with the solution I have presented here: http://codeumbra.eu/how-to-make-a-blazing-fast-ajax-call-to-a-zend-framework-application

This does exactly what you propose: eliminates all the unnecessary database queries and executes only the one that's currently needed (in your case: fetch user data). If your application doesn't use Zend Framework, the principle remains the same regardless - you'll just have to open the database connection the way that is required by your application. Or just use PDO or whatever you're comfortable with.

Essentially, the method assumes you make an AJAX call to the site to fetch the data you want. It's easy in jQuery (example provided in the article mentioned above). You can replace the previous user's data with the requested one's using JavaScript as well on success (I hope you're familiar with AJAX; if not, please leave a comment and I will explain in more detail).

[EDIT]

Since you've explained in your edit that what you mean is URI rewriting, I can suggest implemensting a simple URI router. The basics behind how it works are described here: http://mingos.eu/2012/09/the-basics-of-uri-routing. You can make your router as complex or as simple as needed by your application.

Answer 3

The URL does not dictate whether or not you make a database call. Those are two separate issues. You typically set up your server so example.com/username is rewritten internally to example.com/user.php?id=username. You're still running PHP, the URL is just masking it. That's called pretty URLs, realized by URL rewriting.

If you want to avoid calling the database, cache your data. E.g. in the above user.php script, you generate a complete HTML page, then write it into a cache folder somewhere, then next time instead of generating the page again the script just outputs the contents of the already created page. Or you just cache the database data somewhere, but still generate the HTML anew every time.

You could write an actual HTML file to /username, so the web server will serve it directly without even bothering PHP. That's not typically what you want though, since it's hard to update/expire those files and you also typically want some dynamic content on there.

Answer 4

Select all from your database.

Then create file containing the scripts contents(index.php?user='s) for each one. set the file name to user_id/user_name you got from the SELECT statement.

This will create a page for each user in the present folder.

To avoid having to recreate 'static' pages, you could set a new column named say 'indexedyet' and change it to 1 on creating a file. You select only files which have this as 0. You could perform this via cronjob once a day or so.

This leaves you vulenderable to user data changes though, as they won't autmatically update. a tactic to use here is to update the static page on any editing.

Another, probably better (sorry not had enough coffee yet-) ideal would be to create a folder on a users registration. Make the index.php page tailored to them on registration and then anything like www.mysite.com/myuser will show their 'tailored version'. Again update the page on user updates.

I would be happy to provide examples depending on your approach.