PHP MVC with better htaccess

Question

I have no idea how htaccess works, and the theory of it just wont connect in my head no matter how many tutorials I read.

I am building a simple MVC framework which works beautifully, except I don't like the way I am dealing with htaccess. To rewrite the URL's properly, this is what I am doing:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^users/([^/]+)(/([^/]+))?$ controller/users.php?method=$1&param=$3

If I add a new controller, I then have to go into htaccess and add a new line:

RewriteRule ^access/([^/]+)(/([^/]+))?$ controller/access.php?method=$1&param=$3

Is there a way to make it all automatic with wildcard fields so I don't have to access htaccess every time I do an update?

Answer 1

You can try this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)(/([^/]+))?$ controller/$1.php?method=$2&param=$4

The two extra rules will skip the rewrite if the file or directoy referenced actually exists on the disk, eg: it won't try to rewrite requests for http://site.com/images/logo.jpg.

Answer 2

You can move logic for parsing query string into your framework/application. For this, make you rewrite rule like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]

In this case, any request to server will be processed by index.php (if static file with same name not exists). And $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] will be equal real request uri - just parse it and use for your logic.

For example, if send /user/registry request with that .htaccess

$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] => '/user/registry'

Answer 3

I'd redirect all URIs to index.php and allow another well established MVC concept handle the controller dispatching: Routers.

Many (most) MVC (and some non-MVC) applications use this by default because it allows advanced routing techniques (not only controller/action structured URIs).

Controllers can "register" (new) routers and set their priorities. The application can run all routers (in order of priority) until one router finds a matching route (and is able to discern which controller should be used).

For example many blog-like applications will need SEO friendly URIs meaning something like category/subcategory/subsubcategory/blog-article.html. Many cms-like applications will need the same for their hierarchical pages: top-level-page/mid-level-page/low-level-page.html. As well as many eCommerce applications will want that for their products: category/subcategory/product.html.

The above URIs need a router which will check the database to find out which article/page/product has that URI-key.