Posted by Philip Hallstrom on 10/09/05 05:41

>> Hi List,
>>
>> I am trying to allow dynamic URL's for my users to remember
>> similiar to:
>>
>> www.mysite.com/joesoap
>>
>> So I want to use "joesoap" in a PHP script to pick up the
>> user's details
>> from a MySQL database. If the "joesoap" does not exist in the table
>> I will handle that.
>>
>> So basically I have one file www.mysite.com/index.php which should do
>> all the processing.
>>
>> I have tried with the apache .htaccess mod_rewrite, however
>> when I echo
>> $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] I can't detect the "joesoap". It returns
>> /index.php.
>>
>> Of course the easiest way is to do something like
>> www.mysite.com/index.php?username=joesoap
>> but that is too long and complicated for our users. As we
>> have thousands
>> of users, I don't want to create actual directories.
>>
>> Furthermore can this be done too (without a joesoap file):
>> www.mysite.com/joesoap?show_extra_details=yes
>>
>> Any advice/links would be much appreciated. If I am barking
>> up the wrong
>> tree throw me a bone please.
>>
>> Thanks alot
>> Terence
>
> Hi Terence,
>
> I would handle this in a custom 404 error script. Essentially, just have
> the 404 page parse out the "joesoap", check the database to see if its
> valid, and act accordingly.

The only drawback to this is that the request won't appear in the access
log. At least under apache it won't.

Now if that matter to you or not is another issue...

-philip

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