So if you are using Apache as your webserver you can use mod_rewrite to rewrite the URL to something else.
So for example, create a rewrite rule to rewrite firstname_lastname to people.php?fn=firstname&ln=lastname RewriteRule ^([^-]+)\-([^-]+)\.html$ people.php?fn=$1&ln=$2 [L,NC,NS] Next, the PHP page will have to do something to make it friendlier and expect the person's name and not a number, then lookup the number so it can be used in a query etc. So for a URL like this: http://www.tokyocomedy.com/firstname-lastname.html It will appear to your page as this: people.php?fn=firstname&ln=lastname So, at the top of your page or wherever you would normally look up the record for person=6: $result = yoursqlfunc("SELECT person FROM sometable WHERE firstname='$_GET[fn]' AND lastname='$_GET[ln]'"); Then use your SQL function to get person from $result. Then you should have person=6 and continue as normal. -Shawn Dave M G wrote: > PHP General, > > I have a PHP/MySQL web site where there are profiles for performers at > a comedy show. The profiles are accessed by passing a variable to the > PHP script via URL, which can then look up the right performer data in > the database. > The resulting URL looks like this: > http://www.tokyocomedy.com/people.php?person=6 > However, having "?person=6" in the URL is not only ugly, but it makes > it hard for people to remember URLs and for the performers to use them > when sending out information about themselves. > It would be much nicer to have the url look more like this: > http://www.tokyocomedy.com/firstname-lastname > Or something like that. > > But I can't figure out if there is a way to control the way the URL > reads after the performer has been looked up. And, even if I could, > would the system be able to retrieve performer data if someone typed the > name directly into the URL. > > Obviously, I'm still a bit of a beginner with PHP. I may have > approached this issue from the wrong starting point, so please let me > know if I'm missing something fundamental. > > Thank you for any advice you may have. > > -- > Dave M G -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
