how to generate slugs in php

Question

hey guys

im trying to write a script , that can rewrites urls in slug way such as this :

http://www.mysite.com/mystorytitle/

and i did this in my codes :

 RewriteRule ^(.*)\/$  app=News&file=article&title=$1  [L] 

and in my php codes, i created a slug out of story's title as :

$slug_title = mysql_real_escape_string($mtitle);
$show= "<a href=\"$slug_title/\">$mtitle</a>";

now everything is fine unless when i click on slugged link , it goes to the page but without any style and javascripts and images.

im sure that the problem is because of path for css files and ... which is been changed a level

as i'm in this path : http://www.mysite.com/ایمیل/

so if the page requiring css file as this :

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="includes/NAV.css" type="text/css" />

one level changed and to do this worked , i should come back a level as :

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="../includes/NAV.css" type="text/css" />

i guess , this is concidered as a folder not a rewrited path

but im sure there should be another way to make this script work without changing all paths

thanks in advance

Answer 1

As you already wrote, this will happen because the browser thinks you are in a different directory named after your slug.

You will have to do something to the CSS URLs, either reference them relatively ../includes/ as you already do, or use absolute references /includes/NAV.css (the domain part being optional).

If this is a PHP project, I would create a central settings file containing the web root:

define("SITE_WEBROOT", "http://www.domain.com");

and reference all resources relative to that setting:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" 
      href="<?php echo SITE_WEBROOT; ?>/includes/NAV.css">

Answer 2

You should prepend the base URL (most of the time forward slash, but not always).

You can get it as follows (general expression that will work even if your site resides in a directory):

$baseUrl = rtrim((string)dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), '/\\') . '/';

And then you'll write:

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="<?php echo $baseUrl ?>includes/NAV.css" type="text/css" />

Another possibility is to use the base tag in head:

<base href="<?php echo $baseUrl ?>" />

This has the advantage of changing only one line in your code.

You can go furthur and make utility method to do this:

function baseUrl($url = '', array $query = null, $fragment = null)
{
    static $baseUrl = rtrim((string)dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), '/\\') . '/';

    if ($query !== null) {
        $url .= '?' . http_build_query($query);
    }

    if ($fragment !== null) {
        $url .= '#' . (string)$fragment;
    }

    $url = $baseUrl . $url;
    $url = trim(str_replace('\\', '/', (string)$url));

    return $url;
}

Answer 3

Just add a forward slash before all resource URIs ... like /static/image.png. That will make the browser request it from the root (ie. www.site.com/path)

Answer 4

You can also use the base tag in your head section, then all relative links, stylesheets and images will go from there. We usually do that. It's set automatically in all our projects based on request URL and FILE path of the index.php

For example: