Combining Codeigniter routes with regex

Question

Hi, I've been playing around with creating an e-commerce site with Codeigniter, and am trying to do the following:

Have category names as the first parameter, e.g.

• /tshirts
• /shoes

following each of these, is either a filter (on the category), or the product (with category in URL for SEO)

• /tshirts/filter/price/0-20
• /tshirts/pink-with-blue-spots

What I’m currently doing in the routing is this:

$route['tshirts']                    = 'category/index';
$route['tshirts/(filter|sort)']      = 'category/index';
$route['tshirts/(filter|sort)/:any'] = 'category/index/filter';
$route['tshirts/:any']               = 'product/index';

I want to combine the first two lines into one, as they are accessing the same controller and method.

The second line is there incase someone removes the part after /filter/, and could possibly be combined with another route.

The last route means the second parameter is a product name, so must be passed to the product controller.

I've been playing with http://gskinner.com/RegExr/ and come up with the following, which might be close, think I just need to make the part in brackets optional (it’s picking up the correct routes, except the one without any second parameter), but I'm not sure how to.

category/?(filter|sort|page)

Thanks!

Answer 1

I’m not familiar with the syntax of CodeIgniter routes. But try this:

$route['tshirts(/(filter|sort))?']      = 'category/index';

And if non-capturing groups are supported:

$route['tshirts(?:/(filter|sort))?']      = 'category/index';

Answer 2

Had a quick look at this today, have now combined the

$route['tshirts/(filter|sort)']      = 'category/index';
$route['tshirts/(filter|sort)/:any'] = 'category/index/filter';

into

$route['tshirts(/(filter|sort|page)(/(:any))?)?'] = "category/index/$4";

And in the index($filter = null) method of the category controller, use $filter != null to see whether the filter rules need to be applied.