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You've probably seen those short and sweet URLs that "jump" or "go" somewhere. In my early days (last year) as a PHP coder, webmaster of a new PHP/mySQL-based site and e-zine editor, I noticed more and more of these jump urls. They got my attention because they seemed like an easy way to: |
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- Reduce the length of especially long URLs
- "Hide" the identity of a link
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The former item was especially critical when I wanted to display a newsletter link to information that would be of great interest to my readers, but the length of the URL exceeded the standard 65-character limit of standard text newsletter lines. A URL that breaks into a second line of text is virtually useless to the reader -- it's not clickable "as is", and it requires one or more copy-and-paste operations to get it into the browser's address line. |
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For example, I have a page that's deeply buried in my site's structure. Because of this, I want to replace its actual URL: |
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http://www.webthejoint.com/somedirectory/archivedirectory/2000/december/index.html |
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with something like this: |
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http://www.webthejoint.com/jump.php?id=5 |
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Luckily for me, I use PHP and mySQL. If you do, too, here's an easy solution that you can cobble together quickly. |
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Start by creating a simple mySQL table called "redirects". If your hosting service doesn't provide a front-end for mySQL table creation, execute an SQL statement like this: |
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CREATE TABLE redirects (
id mediumint(8) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
address varchar(200) NOT NULL,
label varchar(60) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
KEY id (id, address),
UNIQUE id_2 (id)
);
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Once the table has been created, add records to this table. The fully-qualified URL gets entered into the address column, a description (for documentation purposes) in the label column. No need to fill in the id column -- mySQL automatically assigns this number. |
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For the above link, my record would have the following column values:
address:
http://www.webthejoint.com/somedirectory/archivedirectory/2000/december/index.html
label: Archive list for Dec. 2000 newsletters
Assuming this was the fifth record I put into the table, the URL I would use would be the much simpler:
http://www.webthejoint.com/jump.php?id=5
As you may have guessed, the final piece of this puzzle is a PHP program called "jump".
Copy this code and save as "jump.php" into your root directory. Remove the line counters before use.
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~~~~~~~~~~~ ( begin code ) ~~~~~~~~~~~
1. <?
2. $db_name = "yourdatabasename";
3. $table_name = "redirects";
4. $pathstring = getenv("HTTP_HOST") == "localhost" ?
getenv("PATH_INFO") : $PHP_SELF ;
5. $id = $id;
6. $connection = mysql_connect("localhost", "yourdatabasename", "yourpassword")
7. or die("Couldn't connect.");
8. $db = mysql_select_db($db_name, $connection)
or die("Couldn't select database.");
9. $sql = "SELECT id, address FROM $table_name";
10. $sql .= " WHERE id = " . $id . ";";
11. $result = mysql_query($sql,$connection) or die("Couldn't execute query.");
12. while ($row = @mysql_fetch_array($result))
13. {
14. $id = $row["id"];
15. $address = $row["address"];
16. }
17. print "\n";
18. print "\n";
23. print "\n";
26. print "\n";
27. print "\n";
28. print "Click here to continue.\n";
29. print "\n";
30. print "\n";
31. ?>
~~~~~~~~~~~ ( end code ) ~~~~~~~~~~~
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Now our example link http://www.webthejoint.com/jump.php?id=5) takes the visitor to our "buried" page. The jump program does a lookup to the redirects table in mySQL and returns the record whose id value is "5". The program then builds the HTML and Javascript code, dropping the address value into location.replace method on line 20 as well as the META tag on line 24 and the anchor tag on line 28. |
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Generally I use "straight" links on our site at WEBtheJOINT, but when I find the need to shorten a long URL or perhaps "disguise" the actual link, all I need to do is add a record to my redirects table and note the id number that mySQL has assigned to the record. |
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| | | Derek Adair wrote : 226
No success in showing my id=1 page. Page comes up
with only `Click here to continue` on it. Any help for a
newbie to MySQL & php would be much appreciated. | | | Anonymous wrote : 227
missing lines in the jump.php3 code lines number 19-22
and 24 | | | Keith Reichley wrote : 228
Here`s the code again, this time including the
missing lines:
<pre>
~~~~~~~~~~~ ( begin code ) ~~~~~~~~~~~
1. <?
2. $db_name = "yourdatabasename";
3. $table_name = "redirects";
4. $pathstring = getenv("HTTP_HOST")
== "localhost" ?
getenv("PATH_INFO") : $PHP_SELF ;
5. $id = $id;
6. $connection = mysql_connect
("localhost", "yourdatabasename",
"yourpassword")
7. or die("Couldn`t connect.");
8. $db = mysql_select_db($db_name, $connection)
or die("Couldn`t select database.");
9. $sql = "SELECT id, address FROM $table_name";
10. $sql .= " WHERE id = " . $id . ";";
11. $result = mysql_query($sql,$connection) or die
("Couldn`t
execute query.");
12. while ($row = @mysql_fetch_array($result))
13. {
14. $id = $row["id"];
15. $address = $row["address"];
16. }
17. print "<HTML><HEAD>\n";
18. print "<SCRIPT language=\"JavaScript1.1
\">\n";
19. print "<!--\n";
20. print "location.replace(\"".$address."\");\n";
21. print "//-->\n";
22. print "</SCRIPT>\n";
23. print "<NOSCRIPT>\n";
24. print "<META http-equiv=\"Refresh\"
content=\"0;
URL=".$address."\">\n";
25. print "</NOSCRIPT>\n";
26. print "</HEAD>\n";
27. print "<BODY>\n";
28. print "Click <A
href=\"".$address."\">here</A> to
continue.\n";
29. print "</BODY>\n";
30. print "</HTML>\n";
31. ?>
~~~~~~~~~~~ ( end code ) ~~~~~~~~~~~
</pre> | | | Scott Gehret wrote : 266
What can you do if your web host does not have
MySQL or any other database?
Thanks,
Scott | | | David Lee wrote : 274
Is there a way to make this work if the ISP does not support PHP but supports Perl? (Or is that just an off the
wall question?)
| | | Anonymous wrote : 301
How about using this line of code instead of javascript?
header("location: $address"); | | | Keith Reichley wrote : 302
I agree with you, Jack. Using the PHP header command
is a lot cleaner than going through all that Javascript.
What was I thinking? | | | Kevin O'Neil wrote : 320
Could you list the whole code with the header:
location: $address part in?
I keep getting an error and can`t fix | | | Keith Reichley wrote : 321
Kevin -
Try this (without the line numbers, of course):
1 <?php
2 $db_name = "yourdatabasename";
3 $table_name = "redirects";
4
5 $cnx = mysql_connect
("localhost", "dbname", "pwd")
6 or die("Couldn`t connect.");
7
8 $db = mysql_select_db($db_name, $cnx)
9 or die("Couldn`t select database.");
10
11 $sql = "SELECT id, address FROM $table_name
12 WHERE id = `$id`";
13
14 $result = mysql_query($sql,$cnx)
15 or die("Couldn`t execute query.");
16
17 while ($row = @mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
18 $id = $row["id"];
19 $address = $row["address"];
20 }
21
22 header("location: $address");
23 ?>
| | | come on get real wrote : 331
what do I fill in for localhost on these two lines:
$pathstring = getenv("HTTP_HOST") == "localhost" ?
getenv("PATH_INFO") : $PHP_SELF ;
$connection = mysql_connect
("localhost", "databasename", "password")
or die("Couldn`t connect."); | | | TrickZ i wrote : 353
[new2php]
Hi,
thx for the script.. looks very nice.
I managed to create the tables and stuff and got the php to
work.
But I would like to change it a little bit.
Can anyone show me wich lines I need to remove/edit in
order to get rid of the "click here to continue" part?
So that it goes straigt to the requested page.
thx for any suggestions you might have
,Trickz | | | Rimas Labrencas wrote : 367
It does not work for me :(.
I could not extract
from "http://www.webthejoint.com/jump.php?id=5" id.
This is how I extracted and tested:
<?php
$id=$_REQUEST[`id`];
print $id;
>
I thought, that this code is responsible for variable extraction:
$pathstring = getenv("HTTP_HOST") == "localhost" ?
getenv("PATH_INFO") : $PHP_SELF ;
$id = $id;
Do you have any other suggestions or explanations of the code
provided? | | | John Paul Veneracion wrote : 378
thanks for the code! =)
i managed to insert it into the wapsite that i am developing...
oh by the way i made a few modifications for the code...
instead of the "click here" thingy, i just inserted the code:
include ("$address");
into the jump.php file so that once you click a link it goes
directly to the page... =)
thanks man!
btw, how do i make a simple message board for wap?
(different topic...!:) | | | John Paul Veneracion wrote : 379
1. <?
2. include("../inc.inc");
3. $table_name = "location";
4. $pathstring = getenv("HTTP_HOST") == "localhost" ? getenv
("PATH_INFO") : $address ;
5. $id = $id;
6. $cnx = mysql_connect
("$hostname", "$username", "$password") or die("Couldn`t
connect.");
7. $db = mysql_select_db($db_name, $cnx) or die("Couldn`t
select database.");
8. $sql = "SELECT id, address, label FROM $table_name";
9. $sql .= " WHERE id = " . $id . ";";
10. $result = mysql_query($sql,$cnx) or die ("Couldn`t execute
query.");
11. while ($row = @mysql_fetch_array($result))
12. {
13. $id = $row["id"];
14. $address = $row["address"];
15. $comment = $row["label"];
16. }
17. print "<WML>\n";
18. print "<SCRIPT language=\"JavaScript1.1 \">\n";
19. print "<!--\n";
20. print "location.replace(\"".$address."\");\n";
21. print "location.replace(\"".$comment."\");\n";
22. print "//-->\n";
23. print "</SCRIPT>\n";
24. print "<NOSCRIPT>\n";
25. print "<META http-equiv=\"Refresh\"
content=\"5;URL=".$address."\">\n";
26. print "</NOSCRIPT>\n";
27. print "<card id=\"jump\" title=\"Redirect\"
ontimer=\".$address.\">\n";
28. print `<timer value="50"/>`;
29. print "<center>";
30. include ("$address");
31. print "</center>";
32. print "</card>\n";
34. print "</WML>\n";
35. ?>
here is my code to directly go to the page after calling
jump.php...
why does the meta-equiv-refresh not work? it was supposed to
wait for a set amount of seconds before going to the desired
page right?
thanks! | |
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