intercepting URLs in a "control-system"

Please forgive any obvious ignorances on my part, I am just learning PHP...

Having read quite a bit on-line, I am interested in trying to "trap" URLs
sent to my site so I can process the request and respond without
neccessarily having a "real" page to serve. If this makes any sense, how do
I do it? Because I expect that apache (in my case) would not like a URL that
contains extra directories/files and would reject it.

An example:

Web Site Root:

www.abc.com/index.php

On that page are "a" tags to further information but which physically don't
exist. It will be automatically generated from a database. For example:

www.abc.com/cars/volvo/X70.html

If I don't have that directory tree and a file called X70.html. Could I
"trap" the http/URL request (BEFORE apache throws it out) and process it in
my PHP control-engine which will find the right information and respond
accordingly?

Thanks in advance,

Alan

PS, if there are any examples of this (GPL) which you know of, please just
pass me the link.

> Having read quite a bit on-line, I am interested in trying to "trap" URLs
> sent to my site so I can process the request and respond without
> neccessarily having a "real" page to serve. If this makes any sense, how do
> I do it? Because I expect that apache (in my case) would not like a URL that
> contains extra directories/files and would reject it.

Try looking at apache mod_rewrite and see if that will work for you...i
have used it to do url rewrites for me and have a main php page handle
the requests.

--
BigDog

Another option besides mod_rewrite is ErrorDocument directive in .htaccess:

ErrorDocument 404 404.php

In 404.php you trap the request, url will be in $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']

Alan Lord wrote:
> Please forgive any obvious ignorances on my part, I am just learning PHP...
>
> Having read quite a bit on-line, I am interested in trying to "trap" URLs
> sent to my site so I can process the request and respond without
> neccessarily having a "real" page to serve. If this makes any sense, how do
> I do it? Because I expect that apache (in my case) would not like a URL that
> contains extra directories/files and would reject it.
>
> An example:
>
> Web Site Root:
>
> www.abc.com/index.php
>
> On that page are "a" tags to further information but which physically don't
> exist. It will be automatically generated from a database. For example:
>
> www.abc.com/cars/volvo/X70.html
>
> If I don't have that directory tree and a file called X70.html. Could I
> "trap" the http/URL request (BEFORE apache throws it out) and process it in
> my PHP control-engine which will find the right information and respond
> accordingly?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Alan
>
> PS, if there are any examples of this (GPL) which you know of, please just
> pass me the link.
>

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/485

That could have the answer you're looking for.



Alan Lord wrote:
> Please forgive any obvious ignorances on my part, I am just learning
> PHP...
>
> Having read quite a bit on-line, I am interested in trying to "trap"
> URLs sent to my site so I can process the request and respond without
> neccessarily having a "real" page to serve. If this makes any sense,
> how do I do it? Because I expect that apache (in my case) would not
> like a URL that contains extra directories/files and would reject it.
>
> An example:
>
> Web Site Root:
>
> www.abc.com/index.php
>
> On that page are "a" tags to further information but which physically
> don't exist. It will be automatically generated from a database. For
> example:
>
> www.abc.com/cars/volvo/X70.html
>
> If I don't have that directory tree and a file called X70.html. Could
> I "trap" the http/URL request (BEFORE apache throws it out) and
> process it in my PHP control-engine which will find the right
> information and respond accordingly?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Alan
>
> PS, if there are any examples of this (GPL) which you know of, please
> just pass me the link.