Usernames instead of id in URL

Hi Friend,
I have a solution considering your server or webhost supports rewrite module...

# This is the .htaccess file
# You need to append these codes in your .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteRule (.*) index.php/$1 [L]

Now when you have done this, the next step is a url parsing engine... a simple example is as follow

/**
 *  A Simple URL Parsing Engine
**/
require_once CLASS_PATH.'database.php';
require_once CLASS_PATH.'generator.php';

class URIParser {
  private $uri;
  private $new_uri;
  private $raw_data;
  
  function __construct()
  {
    $uri = trim($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/');
    $this->uri = explode('/', $uri);
  }

  function parseUri()
  {
    $user = $this->uri[0];
    $db = new Database();
    $db->start();
    $db->prepare("SELECT ID FROM * WHERE username = '?'");
    $response = $db->execute(array($user));
    $db->stop();
    $id = $response[0]['ID'];
    
    $this->new_url = BASE_URL."profile.php?id=".$id;
  }

  function display()
  {
    $generator = new Generator();
    $generator->prepare($this->new_uri);
    $this->raw_data = $generator->get();

    echo $this->raw_data;
  }
}

$parse = new URIParser();

$parse->parseUri();

$parse->display();
?>

This code is an abstracted example of how this can be achieved... This is not a complete code. I hope that this code has given you some idea. By the way a very simple method though is url rewrite module but this is a cool method as you have a lot of control over how to parse the url and it is a more advanced method too.... :D

With Regards
Tushar Srivastava