Need to pick your brain...

[dColumbus]

How would I go about developing a system (in PHP) that would use one website GUI (in my case, Flash) that depending on the username (url example: http://www.somewebsite/username) would be able to pull its distict variables that would affect the FUI according to the usernames preferences (how those variables would be stored isn't important)... the point is to be able to basically replicate the website when requested at the example url above.

Multi-level marketing websites do this... they all use the same site, but a distributor can sign up and get his own url (ie /john) that is obviously displaying his personal information...

As I said, how those variables are stored isn't important, I just wanted to pick some brains to find out how it's possible for a subdirectory to be able to contain the very same website that's located at the public root... and yes I know there are systems out there to by, but I want to play around with developing my own replicating system.

Thanks so much in advance!

[bwh2]

it's not really a subdirectory. it's htaccess making you thinking it's a subdirectory. so in reality, that folder doesn't exist. but htaccess directs you to the correct display page without changing the url.

[dColumbus]

Interesting... so .htaccess also is able to pass specific variables pertaining to that "fake" url? Or, how would I go about incorporating the .htaccess so I can accomplish what I'm talking about above... Where would I go to learn about .htaccess?

[dColumbus]

Apparently, one of my business associates says that his system doesn't use .htaccess at all... how else would this be accomplished?

[dColumbus]

http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=208348&highlight=%22mod_rewrite%22

that thread talks about exactly what I'm trying to describe... but how WOULD a mypace.com be able to have thousands of /username's without it getting so bloated? And, how are the variables associates with that username being read accross from the database?

mod_rewrite?

[bwh2]

i would read through this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod_rewrite

and then some of the external links at the bottom.

[dColumbus]

Thanks for that link... now I understand a little what mod_rewrite is and does. Also that there are verisons of it for IIS.

What I'm still trying to figure out is how (perhaps using mod_rewrite) can take the "/username" portion of the url and use that username to determine what table, or set of variables to grab from a database... does PHP grab the "username" string from the url and use that in it's code... or is there some other way of accomplishing this?

[dColumbus]

anyone?

[dColumbus]

I'm revisiting this. Can anyone help me out?

[djheru]

I'm only familiar with LAMP setups, but in PHP/Apache, there's the $PATH_INFO environment variables.

Instead of:
http://www.yourdomain.com/script.php?var1=val1&var2=val2

you can structure your URL like so:
http://www.yourdomain.com/script.php/value1/value2

Then, the $PATH_INFO variable would contain "/value1/value2". You can simply use


$vals = explode('/', $PATH_INFO);

$var1=$vals[0];
$var2=$vals[1];
Then, you can use those variables to run database queries to get profile settings, pass them to flash via flashVars or whatever else you need to do.