The basics of php routing

Question

I'm seeking for a how-to guide or explanation of the most fundamental PHP routing.

For instance, I want to use the get function of a route class to supply the data when someone clicks on a URL like mywebsite.com/users, much like laravel does.

Route::get('users', function()
{
    return 'Users!';
});

Can somebody explain how to do this or provide me with some more information?

Answer 1

The web server handles routing for PHP in its most used configuration. The request path is mapped to a file to do this: The web server will really search for a file with the name test.php in a predefined directory if you type in www.example.org/test.php.

For our needs, the following functionality is useful: You can also call www.example.org/test.php/hello on many web servers, and test.php will still be executed. PHP uses the $_SERVER['PATH INFO'] variable to make the extra files in the requested path available. In this instance, it would have "/hello" in it.

You can build a very simple router like this:

<?php

// First, let's define our list of routes.
// We could put this in a different file and include it in order to separate
// logic and configuration.
$routes = array(
    '/'      => 'Welcome! This is the main page.',
    '/hello' => 'Hello, World!',
    '/users' => 'Users!'
);

// This is our router.
function router($routes)
{
    // Iterate through a given list of routes.
    foreach ($routes as $path => $content) {
        if ($path == $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']) {
            // If the path matches, display its contents and stop the router.
            echo $content;
            return;
        }
    }

    // This can only be reached if none of the routes matched the path.
    echo 'Sorry! Page not found';
}

// Execute the router with our list of routes.
router($routes);

?>

I hope this helps you.