Shortening URL containing query strings

Question

I'm using Codeigniter(PHP Framework) and I have URLs like http://www.mysite.com/age/21/gender/female/name/jamie/city/boston/userid/1234.

Is it possible to make the URL more SEO/user friendly? Like http://www.mysite.com/1234-Jamie-Boston and somehow still be able to pass the values found in the original URL strings like age =>21 and gender => female?

I try not to use query strings as its against the design of the Codeigniter framework. I'm writing a search engine for a site and the URL is really long with lots of parameters in the segment based URLs http://www.mysite.com/searchterm/funny/since/2011/sortby/ratings/shorterthan/3/page/5 — Nyxynyxx
– Nyxynyxx, Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 5:30

Tudor Constantin · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-05 05:05:32Z

3

I think you could - use mod_rewrite to rewrite your new url from http://www.mysite.com/1234-Jamie-Boston to http://www.mysite.com/user/1234. In your user controller load from the db the one with id 1234 and set all his other properties

Or without the mod_rewrite - you could modify your application/config/routes.php file with an entry like:

$route['(\d+)-.*'] = "users/display_user/$1";

This way your SEO friendly urls will point to class Users, method display_users and you will get the id as parameter

edited Jul 5, 2011 at 5:05

answered Jul 5, 2011 at 4:59

Tudor Constantin

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Dawson Over a year ago

+1 from me. I've used the routes.php approach, and left my .htaccess file alone. In that scenario I was able to treat all top-level sub directories differently from my "industries" pages - essentially, made it easy to write an abstract class for everything and a distinct class just for industries. btw - watch the order of your routes.

cwallenpoole · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-05 05:00:15Z

The way that PHP works is that if you send 15 parameters to a function which only requires two, then PHP can more or less "swallow" the other arguments (they're still accessible, but they are less than optional). In your case, I would create a Users controller, perhaps with a display function which only takes one parameter, the user ID. That way, you can have /users/display/1234/whatever/you/would/like/zodiac_sign/stop_sign/favorite_letter/favorite%20punctuation/... Need I go on?

You can get around the need for a controller/method as part of your URL by using the $routes config file... In this case, I don't think user/display would really hurt SEO. I would not use mod_rewrite to do that simply because the architecture is already there in CodeIgniter.

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