Virtual Directories?

[Purple Haze]

I have seen websites that use a sort of "virtual directory" system...

Lets say when you click on something it goes to
[url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/[/url]

Neither the scripts directory nor the php directory physically exisit on
the server, does anyone know how this is done?

[Thomas Mlynarczyk]

Also sprach Purple Haze:

> I have seen websites that use a sort of "virtual directory" system...
>
> Lets say when you click on something it goes to
> [url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/[/url]
>
> Neither the scripts directory nor the php directory physically exisit
> on the server, does anyone know how this is done?

The Apache web server can automatically transform a path into another using
the Alias directive in its configuration files:

Alias /scripts/php c:/just/another/directory

So, when you type [url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/[/url], Apache goes to
c:/just/another/directory instead.

However, there is a much more flexible solution with Apache, it's called
mod_rewrite. This is an Apache module that allows you to transform
(re-write) URLs whichever way you wish, depending on the URL and the
environment. Example:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^scripts/php/(.*)$ /my/own/directory/myscript.php?page=$1

So, when you type [url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/welcome.html[/url], the above
rule (to be placed either in the Apache's config file or an .htaccess file)
will transform this into
[url]http://www.example.com/my/own/directory/myscript.php?page=welcome.html[/url]. The
syntax of mod_rewrite uses regular expressions and is a bit complicated (I'm
not even sure if my above example will actually work, but it illustrates the
principle.) But it can be a very powerful tool.

Greetings,
Thomas

[Shawn Wilson]

Purple Haze wrote:

>
> I have seen websites that use a sort of "virtual directory" system...
>
> Lets say when you click on something it goes to
> [url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/[/url]
>
> Neither the scripts directory nor the php directory physically exisit on
> the server, does anyone know how this is done?

Hey,

[url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/[/url]

1. Create a file called "scripts" in the web root.


2. Make a .htaccess file to force Apache to interpret "scripts" as PHP

<Files scripts>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php (going from memory. Google "ForceType")
</Files>


3. Manually get the trailing bits and use them to search a database or whatever.

$possiblevalues = array('php', 'cgi', 'perl', 'asp');
$trailingbits = preg_replace('/^scripts\//', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
if (!in_array($trailingbits, $possiblevalues))
show_my_error('Invalid script type');
else
list_scripts($trailingbits);

Shawn

--
Shawn Wilson
[email]shawn@glassgiant.com[/email]
[url]http://www.glassgiant.com[/url]

[Berislav Lopac]

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:35:08 GMT, Purple Haze wrote:

> I have seen websites that use a sort of "virtual directory" system...
>
> Lets say when you click on something it goes to
> [url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/[/url]
>
> Neither the scripts directory nor the php directory physically exisit on
> the server, does anyone know how this is done?

a) mod_rewrite on Apache
b) custom 404 error page

[Justin Koivisto]

Berislav Lopac wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:35:08 GMT, Purple Haze wrote:
>
>

>>I have seen websites that use a sort of "virtual directory" system...
>>
>>Lets say when you click on something it goes to
>>[url]http://www.example.com/scripts/php/[/url]
>>
>>Neither the scripts directory nor the php directory physically exisit on
>>the server, does anyone know how this is done?

>
>
> a) mod_rewrite on Apache
> b) custom 404 error page

c) ISAPI_rewrite on IIS

--
Justin Koivisto - [email]spam@koivi.com[/email]
[url]http://www.koivi.com[/url]