For example,

Current URL style: http://example.com/controller/method/category1/category2/page-name
Target URL style: http://example.com/category1/category2/page-name.html

As you can see, the difference in the target URL is the absence of the controller name and the method name and the presence of the extension “.html”. Now, lets see how to achieve this and why the extra extension is required.

Below is my version of .htaccess.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]+)\.html$ index.php/page/$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|asset|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

The line that is extra is 3 which redirects all the requests for “.html” files to the controller named “page”.

Now, lets look at the page controller which will handle these requests.

<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class Page extends Controller
    {

    function __construct()
    {
        parent::Controller();
    }

    function _remap()
    {
        $segment_count = $this->uri->total_segments();
        $segments = $this->uri->segment_array();

        if($segment_count == 0)
        {
            $this->data['title'] = 'UB Group Wines Division';
            $this->load->view('home', $this->data);
        }
        elseif($segment_count == 2) // Single page
        {
            $page_url = $segments[2];
            // Handle the page request
        }
        elseif($segment_count == 3) // Page with category
        {
            $category = $segments[2];
            $page_url = $segments[3];
            // Handle the category + page request
        }
    }
}

In this way you can have pages with smaller and cleaner URLs.

Tips:
1. You can use any extension you like. e.g; in case you have static HTML files to server, you can use the extension “.html” for static and “.htm” for non-static files.
2. You can have any number of URL stubs before the “.html” extension and you can access all these stubs in the controller.

Cons:
1. The URL needs an extra extension.
2. Only one controller per extension.

Do let me know what you think about this or if there is any way to improve on this.

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MySQL Database replication

We can implement this in codeigniter using database groups.
Below is a sample execution.

Create two active groups – one for read and one for write.

File: system/application/config/database.php

$active_group = "write";
$active_record = TRUE;

$db['read']['hostname'] = "localhost";
$db['read']['username'] = "root";
$db['read']['password'] = "";
$db['read']['database'] = "read_database_name";
$db['read']['dbdriver'] = "mysql";
$db['read']['dbprefix'] = "";
$db['read']['pconnect'] = TRUE;
$db['read']['db_debug'] = FALSE;
$db['read']['cache_on'] = FALSE;
$db['read']['cachedir'] = "";
$db['read']['char_set'] = "utf8";
$db['read']['dbcollat'] = "utf8_general_ci";

$db['write']['hostname'] = "localhost";
$db['write']['username'] = "root";
$db['write']['password'] = "";
$db['write']['database'] = "write_database_name";
$db['write']['dbdriver'] = "mysql";
$db['write']['dbprefix'] = "";
$db['write']['pconnect'] = TRUE;
$db['write']['db_debug'] = FALSE;
$db['write']['cache_on'] = FALSE;
$db['write']['cachedir'] = "";
$db['write']['char_set'] = "utf8";
$db['write']['dbcollat'] = "utf8_general_ci";

Create separate database connections to access read and write databases separately where needed (constructor is generally a good place for this).

$read_db = $this->load->database('read', TRUE);
$write_db = $this->load->database('write', TRUE);

You can now go about running queries in the usual way.

/* For reads */
$query = $read_db->get('table_name');

foreach ($query->result() as $row)
{
    echo $row->title;
}

/* For writes */
$data = array(
               'title' => $title,
               'name' => $name,
               'date' => $date
            );

$write_db->insert('mytable', $data);

In case you want to try this on an application you are already running, you can leave the “default” connection group intact and create only the “read” connection group. Use it where you think you are running read heavy queries.

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