Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] Link simplification proposal

[Shaun M. <sh...@ae...>]

On 3 Nov 2004, at 21:12, Matthew McNaney wrote:
>
>
> I like the example, and I can code support for it even though it still
> requires Apache. Is there a noticeable difference in speed between
> letting php parse the string and letting mod_rewrite compute the link?
>

I imagine it depends on the rules used. If there's significant regular  
expression matching then maybe a more targeted piece of PHP would be  
faster.

> Is mod_rewrite unpopular?
>

More 'not standard' for cheaper hosting packages.


> The site claims:
> "Because doing mod_rewrite on sites with a lot of pages takes up a  
> large
> amount of resources."
>
> Are they programming a rewrite on a per link basis? Currently 0.9.4 has
> just one rule (although admittedly it is not very flexible).
>

I think it comes down to the regex.

>
>> Couldn't we just do this with a minor change in index.php?
>>
>> Add a stub in each module to encode / decode short urls and change  
>> each
>> module as we go to call the functions to convert long urls to short
>> ones.
>>
>> We could then even lose the index.php with a really simple mod_rewrite
>> or forcetype rule rather than some massive list.
>
> I'll play around with this tomorrow. How about:
>
> www.site.com/index/pagemaster/action/view/id/4
>

Better I suppose but I can't help thinking that the important info in  
that url is

www.site.com/pagemaster/4

and the rest can be assumed for users. Even 'pagemaster' is a bit of an  
odd name. I'd like to see www.site.com/page4

> 'index' remains to call the file (is there a .htaccess hack to drop  
> this
> as well?).

Wouldn't you be able to replace index.php?module=pagemaster with  
pagemaster/   ??

> The first parameter after the index is always the module
> (pagemaster). Then the script pipes the remaining parameters into
> key/value pairs within GET and REQUEST.
>
> The moduleLink and secureLink functions can have a switch to deliver  
> the
> links in this format or not automatically.
>

That's where to put it although not everybody uses moduleLink. Just a  
matter of getting people to change.

One other thing that might be nice is some virtual links.

For instance, I've an 'about' page at  
www.site.com/index.php? 
module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=9

It'd be nice to be able to create a virtual link as www.site.com/about/

This is maybe a role for a separate module to create and manage these  
virtual links but perhaps it needs core help also.

Shaun
aegis design - http://www.aegisdesign.co.uk