#1197 Pretty URLs

[Paul Eipper]

Currently PGV doesn't even try to create human-readable URL's and it could be much improved. Examples:

/user/myname
instead of
/edituser.php

/dashboard
instead of
/index.php?ctype=user

/family/individual/1
instead of
/individual.php?pid=I1&ged=family

/calendar/2010/02/19
instead of
/calendar.php?cal=&day=19&month=FEB&year=2010&filterev=bdm&filterof=all&filtersx=&action=calendar

and so on.

[ggpauly]

Why do you hate this?

Try to ignore the URLs and focus on the pretty GUI. Or genealogy. Or which James Smith b 1822 is this?

In Firefox you can hide the navigation toolbar. (Oh oh - can somebody tell me how to get it back?)

[Stephen Arnold]

Paul,
I agree with GG. What a waste of programmers efforts to 'tidyURL' ever PGV-precise URL. JOHO
-Stephen

[Greg Roach]

This is generally achieved by using the "front controller model". Wikipedia is a good example. You type www.mywiki.com/Foo, which is internally translated to www.mywiki.com/index.php?q=Foo

Both the "human friendly" and "computer friendly" URLs are synonymous.

With PGV, you could have the URL www.mysite.com/I1234/myged.ged work as the same way as www.mysite.com/individual.php?pid=I1234&ged=myged.ged

It uses a .htaccess file to redirect missing "files" to a controller (typically index.php), which converts the URL, and passes on the request to the relevant module.

This technique has a lot of advantages. From a programmer's perspective, it enables you to centrally manage authorisation issues, add global templates, change the internal site structure while maintaining the same external interface, etc.

It's a good technique. One I've given quite some thought to :-)