Problem with mod_rewrite and replacing spaces in URL

[David]

Sent this to alt.php a couple of days back, but doesn't look like I'll
get an answer, so trying here.

I'm trying to convert a script to use friendly URLs, I've done this
before, but my PHP skills are quite basic so far, far from proficient
at this.

..htaccess file-

DirectoryIndex default.php index.asp index.html index.htm index.php

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/Artist/([^/]+)/$ search.php?typ=$1&search=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/Artist/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$
search.php?typ=$1&search=$2&page=$3 [L]

RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ default.php?typ=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ default.php?typ=$1&page=$2 [L]

RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ default.php?typ=$1&cat=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$
default.php?typ=$1&cat=$2&page=$3 [L]

RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$
default.php?typ=$1&cat=$2&sct=$3 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$
default.php?typ=$1&cat=$2&sct=$3&page=$4 [L]

Each set of rules creates these URLs-

example.com/$1/Artist/$2/
example.com/$1/Artist/$2/$3/ ($3 is a page number)

example.com/$1/
example.com/$1/$2/ ($2 is a page number)

example.com/$1/$2/
example.com/$1/$2/$3/ ($3 is a page number)

example.com/$1/$2/$3/
example.com/$1/$2/$3/$4/ ($4 is a page number)

It works.

However when variable $2 or $3 (when not a page number), for example
$2 of-

example.com/$1/Artist/$2/
example.com/$1/Artist/$2/$3/ ($3 is a page number)

Includes a space I can't get the PHP script to create an hyphenated
version that works even though at browser level the hyphen is there
(click on it, but the right page does not load).

So a starting URL like

example.com/ringtone/Artist/Britney%20Spears/ (works)

Converted to-

example.com/ringtone/Artist/Britney-Spears/ (doesn't work)

Using a function (see later) that converts spaces to hyphens doesn't
load what I see at example.com/ringtone/Artist/Britney%20Spears/
instead I see a 404 error page (blank script page) and I don't
understand why (I've used the function before)

Using urlencode instead of the function replaces spaces with + so I
see

example.com/ringtone/Artist/Britney+Spears/ (works)

but it's not the format I want and there are other characters I'd like
to remove including ( ) ! &.

So what is wrong with this function (which I don't fully understand
BTW)-

function text2url( $string ){
$string = ltrim($string);
// remove unnecessary spaces and make everything lower case
$string = preg_replace( "/ +/", " ", strtolower($string) );

// special rule for dashes, I think it looks nicer :-p
$string = str_replace(' - ', '-', $string);
// removing a set of reserved characters (rfc2396: ; / ? : @ & = + $
,)
$string =
str_replace(array(';','/','?',':','@','&','=','+','$',',','#'), '',
$string);

// replace some characters to similar ones (more readable uris)
$search = array(' ', 'ä', 'ö', 'ü','ë','ï','é','è','à','ç',);
#$replace = array('_','ae','oe','ue','e','i','e','e','a','c');
$replace = array('-','ae','oe','ue','e','i','e','e','a','c');
$string = str_replace($search, $replace, $string);

// remove everything we didn't so far...
$string = preg_replace("/[^a-z0-9_-]/", "", $string);

// urlencode everything, in case we missed something ;-)
return urlencode($string);
}

When I use it like this

$artist2 = text2url($artist);

echo'<a href="'.$site_url.''.$typ.'/Artist/'.$artist2.'/1/"><img
src="'.$site_url.'button_more_from.gif" alt="All Truetones from
'.$artist.'" border="0"></a>'.$artist.' ';
It converts spaces to hyphens, but within a browser it fails.
This works but adds +

echo'<a
href="'.$site_url.''.$typ.'/Artist/'.urlencode($artist).'/1/"><img
src="'.$site_url.'button_more_from.gif" alt="All Truetones from
'.$artist.'" border="0"></a>'.$artist.'';
Thanks in advance for any help as I'm stumped.

David
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[Jeremy]

David wrote:

Sent this to alt.php a couple of days back, but doesn't look like I'll
get an answer, so trying here.

I'm trying to convert a script to use friendly URLs, I've done this
before, but my PHP skills are quite basic so far, far from proficient
at this.

<snip>

One thing I immediately noticed: your text2url function lowercases
everything, but your Britney Spears example is capitalized.

At a more fundamental level, how are you using the URL to lookup the
artists themselves? This is where the problem lies. You are going to
have to do the same transformation to the artist name when looking up
the artist that you did when creating the friendly URL.

For example, here is a simple scheme which lowercases the URL and
replaces spaces with dashes, and the corresponding database lookup.

..htaccess:
-----------------------------------------
RewriteRule ^artists/([^/]+) /artists.php?artistName=$1
-----------------------------------------
URL creation:
-------------------------------------------
$url = "/artists/" . strtolower(str_replace(" ", "-", $artistName));
-------------------------------------------
Artist lookup (assumes PDO/PGSQL):
------------------------------------
$artist_query = $pdo->prepare("select * from artists where
LOWER(REPLACE(artist_name, ' ', '-')) = :artistName");

$artist_query->bindParam(":artistName", $_GET["artistName"]);
$artist_query->execute();
$artist = $artist_query->fetch();
-----------------------------

This code will obviously not work verbatim; it's just an example of how
you need perform the same transformation on artist names when you're
looking them up, or the comparison won't work. Notice how in my SQL
query I'm comparing the passed-in artist name (in the form of
"britney-spears") with the artist name in the database (in the form of
"Britney Spears") only AFTER I transform the database version to the
proper format - LOWER(REPLACE(...)) transforms "Britney Spears" to
"britney-spears", making the comparison successful.

Jeremy

[David]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:55:44 -0700, Jeremy <je****@pinacol.comwrote:

>David wrote:

>Sent this to alt.php a couple of days back, but doesn't look like I'll
get an answer, so trying here.

I'm trying to convert a script to use friendly URLs, I've done this
before, but my PHP skills are quite basic so far, far from proficient
at this.

<snip>

One thing I immediately noticed: your text2url function lowercases
everything, but your Britney Spears example is capitalized.

I'd tried it with and without lowercase, so that wasn't a major
problem. Don't mind if the URls have upper case characters.

>At a more fundamental level, how are you using the URL to lookup the
artists themselves? This is where the problem lies. You are going to
have to do the same transformation to the artist name when looking up
the artist that you did when creating the friendly URL.

For example, here is a simple scheme which lowercases the URL and
replaces spaces with dashes, and the corresponding database lookup.

.htaccess:
-----------------------------------------
RewriteRule ^artists/([^/]+) /artists.php?artistName=$1
-----------------------------------------
URL creation:
-------------------------------------------
$url = "/artists/" . strtolower(str_replace(" ", "-", $artistName));
-------------------------------------------

I've tried similar and it's worked fine with other sites, just this
one fails!

Tried a simpler function-

function safeurl($name){
$retVal = str_replace('/',' ',$name);
$retVal = str_replace('-',' ',$retVal);
return $retVal;
}
To replace a / with a space and spaces with a -

Example code-
$viewart = '<div style="clear:both; text-align:right;
padding-right:15px;">
<h4>View All <a
href="'.$site_url.''.safeurl($typ).'/Artist/'.safeurl($artist).'/1/">Polyphonic
Ringtones by '.$artist.'</a></h4>
</div>';
}
?>

<?php echo''.$viewart.'';?>
It works at code level, the \ and spaces are removed/replaced with -
when viewed in a browser but when clicking links they fail.
This code on the other hand works fine-

$viewart = '<div style="clear:both; text-align:right;
padding-right:15px;">
<h4>View All <a
href="'.$site_url.''.urlencode($typ).'/Artist/'.urlencode($artist).'/1/">Polyphonic
Ringtones by '.$artist.'</a></h4>
</div>';
}
?>

<?php echo''.$viewart.'';?>
This as expected replaces spaces with a + and characters like / are
replaced with %2F etc... the + URLs work but the / and some other
characters don't, so partial success.

I don't understand why the function fails?

>
Artist lookup (assumes PDO/PGSQL):
------------------------------------
$artist_query = $pdo->prepare("select * from artists where
LOWER(REPLACE(artist_name, ' ', '-')) = :artistName");

$artist_query->bindParam(":artistName", $_GET["artistName"]);
$artist_query->execute();
$artist = $artist_query->fetch();
-----------------------------

Does it make any difference that most of the data is from a CSV file
(no database)?

The code to get data is-

$row=0;
$file = fopen("$filepath", "r");

while (($data = fgetcsv($file, 1000, ";")) !== FALSE) {
if ($sct==''){
if ($data[$DATA["typ"]]==$typ and $data[$DATA["cat"]]==$cat or
$data[$DATA["typ"]]==$typ and $cat==''){

$row++;

$nam[$row] = $data[$DATA["nam"]];
$dsc[$row] = $data[$DATA["dsc"]];
$dsl[$row] = $data[$DATA["dsl"]];
$pth[$row] = $data[$DATA["pth"]];
$ppl[$row] = $data[$DATA["ppl"]];

} }

if ($sct>''){
if ($data[$DATA["typ"]]==$typ and $data[$DATA["cat"]]==$cat and
$data[$DATA["sct"]]==$sct){

$row++;

$nam[$row] = $data[$DATA["nam"]];
$dsc[$row] = $data[$DATA["dsc"]];
$dsl[$row] = $data[$DATA["dsl"]];
$pth[$row] = $data[$DATA["pth"]];
$ppl[$row] = $data[$DATA["ppl"]];

} }
}
fclose($file);

First time I've worked with a site using a CSV file.

Should I be replacing the spaces etc... in this code somehow?

>This code will obviously not work verbatim; it's just an example of how
you need perform the same transformation on artist names when you're
looking them up, or the comparison won't work. Notice how in my SQL
query I'm comparing the passed-in artist name (in the form of
"britney-spears") with the artist name in the database (in the form of
"Britney Spears") only AFTER I transform the database version to the
proper format - LOWER(REPLACE(...)) transforms "Britney Spears" to
"britney-spears", making the comparison successful.

I tried variations of your code, but couldn't get anything to work.

>Jeremy

Thanks very much for the advice so far, appreciated.

David
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