Alternative to Query Strings

[JustForWebmasters]

Hello all,

I know that there have been several posts on this same topic: How to use slash marks instead of query strings. For a newbie, this can be challenging, so I have done a lot of research and came up with the following:

// fetch the possible article ids and chapter ids
$url_array = explode("/",$PATH_INFO);
$catid=$url_array[1];
$id=$url_array[2];
$chapid[b]=$url_array;[/b] 

Everything needs to remain intact except where it says $catid, $id, and $chapid, those need to be changed to the value of your variable that is the unique identifier. Also, the numbers ([1], [2], [3]...) need to be changed depending on what order it is.

If something doesn't make sense, email or PM me and I'll try to help you out.

Special thanks to Erik Johansen of Netmaking for all of his help.

[freddydoesphp]

Okay so I get what you are trying to do here, and I have been actively participating in those posts you mentioned but here is an even better way to do it. Add your variable names in to the query string as well for example in youre example you have $catid $id and $chapid so you could do this where you take the path_info var and break it up to create the keys and vals of a new array automatically then you can use extract() to create the vars you need.

<?
$url_array = explode("/", $PATH_INFO);
$i = 1;
while($i <= count($url_array)) {
    $tmp_array[$url_array[$i]] = $url_array[$i + 1];
    $i += 2;
    }
extract($tmp_array);
print "catid = $catid<br>";
print "id = $id<br>";
print "chapid = $chapid<br>";
?>

[aspen]

As of this time pages with urls done in this manner will not be indexed by google. I've been in contact with a software developer at google and they are aware of the problem but he hasn't said if they've fixed it (or are going to).