How to change appearance of URL from within a PHP script

Question

I have some PHP and HTML in the same file, and I am not exactly sure how to make the URL appear as the name of that page.

Here is an example of what I would like to

Answer 1

What you need is to learn more on how .htaccess work.

Here is a good link that got me started:

.htaccess tricks and tips

Update:

Here is a very common practice in many framework where all requests are sent to index.php, and from there you use php to serve the correct page:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.site.com/index.php [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

Answer 2

This is actually a function of your HTTP server software (often Apache), not of PHP.

What you're seeing happen on sites with "friendly" URLs is that the friendly name is captured in a Regular Expression and then passed to PHP.

For example:

GET /HelloWorld

is sent to your web server.. the web server parses it

RewriteCond ^(A REGULAR EXPRESSION TO CAPTURE YOUR FRIENDLY NAME)$
RewriteRule page.php?id=(EXPRESSION FROM ABOVE)

In this way your PHP script will always receive the friendly name as a parameter.

Take a look at "mod_write" for Apache - which you can often create rules for using an ".htaccess" file in the root directory.