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PHP

Kennard McGill
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Kennard McGill
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 45,227 Points
Posted by Kennard McGill
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Kennard McGill
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 45,227 Points

Decode special characters in URL

I'm currently developing a site but need help changing the encoded characters in the url. I've tried a RewriteRule but can't seem to get it to work. Perhaps there is even a better way of handling this.

My urls started out as store/gifts/shop.php?id=Harry+%26+David

After my RewriteRule in my .htaccess file the url is now

stores/gifts/Harry+%26+David

But how do I clean up the URl so it doesn't display encoded characters. Its Harry & David in my database field

4 Answers

Kennard McGill
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Kennard McGill
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 45,227 Points
Kennard McGill
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Kennard McGill
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 45,227 Points

I've tried that but but php just returns:

'Harry' instead of 'Harry & David'

Since this is my id value I need it entack to pull the shops detail page.

I'm thinking it might just be better to change the character in my database from ampersand '&' to a dash '-'. At least it will still be search engine friendly if its Harry-David, which is my ultimate goal.

I'm not sure what to do with it really. Is leaving it there with the encoded character considered bad coding or is it ok to have characters like that in the url.

Thanks Randy!

Randy Hoyt
Randy Hoyt
Treehouse Guest Teacher
Randy Hoyt
Randy Hoyt
Treehouse Guest Teacher

First of all, you can certainly have an escaped ampersand in the URL. I'm surprised it's not working. Ampersands are tricky because they are used in HTML to mark an entity, but I wouldn't think that would be a problem.

But second of all, I would shy away from using them for web address.

But third of all, I wouldn't change the name of the character in the database. You should be able to display it on the page as Harry & David if that's what you want it to say. The trick is to have two fields, one for display name and one for the web address. (This is what software like WordPress does.) The shirt could have two columns:

+---------------+---------------+
|      name     |      id       |
+---------------+---------------+
| Harry & David |  harry-david  |
+---------------+---------------+

Does that help?

Randy Hoyt
STAFF
Randy Hoyt
Treehouse Guest Teacher
Randy Hoyt
Randy Hoyt
Treehouse Guest Teacher

Hey Kennard McGill ,

You should be able to use the following function in PHP:

$id = urldecode($id);

Here's a link to the documentation for it: http://php.net/manual/en/function.urldecode.php.

Does that help?

Kennard McGill
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Kennard McGill
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 45,227 Points
Kennard McGill
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Kennard McGill
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 45,227 Points

I'm sorry if i wasn't clear on my first question. I can display the character just fine on the page, it was just the url i was concerned about and wanted to make sure i was following best pratices. Adding a second field like you stated is a great way to handle this.

Thanks Randy!

Faizal Heesyam
Faizal Heesyam
8,843 Points
Faizal Heesyam
Faizal Heesyam
8,843 Points

or maybe you want to slugify that string..

function slugify($string) {
    return strtolower(trim(preg_replace(array('~[^0-9a-z]~i', '~-+~'), '-', $string), '-'));
}

:D