Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] Link simplification proposal

[Matthew M. <ma...@tu...>]

I am still researching this but thought I would comment further.

> More 'not standard' for cheaper hosting packages.

Fair enough.

> Better I suppose but I can't help thinking that the important info in  
> that url is
> 
> www.site.com/pagemaster/4

I am going to try and find a way to dump index.php out of the link. I
don't know a lot of htaccess (the mod_rewrite stuff took me a while to
understand) but I'm sure it is doable.

The above link would be useful but I think it is too restrictive. There
needs to be a balance for it to be useful. If pagemaster had its own
personal htaccess file, then there would be no problem. It would know
what to do with the '4' without further information.

To do the above, we would have to dictate that the action is a user
view. So:
$_GET['action'] = 'view';

Unless we:
if (!isset($_GET['action']))
	$_GET['action'] = 'view';

So far so good. But what if pagemaster has two different view functions?
One view the page, one views pictures or something. We are trapped by
the format. If viewing a page was the ONLY user function we needed to
account for, that would work, but I don't see that often. There are
usually many different things a user can do in a module and creating
htaccess rules to cover the all is complicated.

Sure its shorter, but a few more variables opens up a great deal more
flexibility. I don't think it is worth having complicated code or having
developers write specialized code just to have a small link. Who really
types links anyway? Links are clicked. I think the flexibility outweighs
the tiny link format.


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

If we don't then you would see:

if ($apache_server && $htaccess_allowed)
	return $small_link_format;
else
	return $full_link_format;

It would just be easier to let devs enter variables into a function and
not have to worry about it.

Thanks for the feedback Shaun,
Matt

-- 
Matthew McNaney
Internet Systems Architect
Electronic Student Services
Appalachian State University
Phone: 828-262-6493
http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu
http://ess.appstate.edu