CodeIgniter hide post id and only slug URL - codeigniter

Question

I'm working on custom blog based on CodeIgniter. Got some problems at the moment I've achieved url:
/blog/view/1/my-very-first-post
I'm not happy with that I'd like to get rid off id and "/view"
That's how my controller looks like:
function index($postId=null)
{
$this->view($postId=null);
}
function view($postId, $str_slug = '')
{
$data['title'] = ucfirst("Blog");
$data['post'] = $this->posts->get_posts($postId);
if($postId !== null)
{
$this->load->view('templates/head', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('posts/single_view', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/footer',$data);
} else {
$this->load->view('templates/head', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('posts/index', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/footer',$data);
}
$row = $this->db->get_where('posts', array('id' => $postId))->row();
if ($row and ! $str_slug) {
$str_slug = url_title($row->title, 'dash', TRUE);
redirect("blog/view/{$postId}/{$str_slug}");
}
}
What is the best way to achieve this?
Thanks!!
Adam

Answer 1

I think you're looking for the _remap() method. You can read more about it here: http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/general/controllers.html#remapping
Your code would look something like below. You still need to implement the get_posts_by_slug() method if you still need it.
public function _remap($slug) {
$data['title'] = ucfirst("Blog");
$data['post'] = $this->posts->get_posts_by_slug($slug);
if($slug !== null)
{
$this->load->view('templates/head', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('posts/single_view', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/footer',$data);
} else {
$this->load->view('templates/head', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('posts/index', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/footer',$data);
}
$row = $this->db->get_where('posts', array('slug' => $slug))->row();
}
Update:
Hey #AdamLesniak - it's generally good design to store a permalink to a blog post or a news article, so that it's not dependent on the title or any other volatile data structure in order to still be accessible.
But for a different approach, personally, I really think this is a nice system:
http://localhost/blog/my-news-article-title-permalink/3
The main issue is that if you don't store the slug/permalink somewhere, then you're going to feel sad when somebody changes the title of an article. Example, my article called "Hello World First Blog Post", which is accessible at:
http://localhost/blog/hello-world-first-blog-post
Changes into "First post I ever made":
http://localhost/blog/first-post-i-ever-made
So what happens to the initial URL? It's no longer accessible - any user that comes on the website via a search engine, or through somebody's link will now no longer see your comment and will instead get a 404 page, which you want to avoid.
A problem with using permalinks on their own is that you need to make sure they're unique, and extra constraints need to be set in place for that.
There are a few tricks that you can do, but they all have their pitfalls. You can for instance use the system I've mentioned above, where you stick the unique identifier at the end of the URL:
http://localhost/blog/hello-world/3
And if the title changes, you don't really care, because you're not using the slug to make your searches, but instead, you're relying on the unique identifier.
http://localhost/blog/first-post-i-ever-made/3
However I've seen opinions that this sort of system is against the idea of an URL (Uniform Resource Locator). I've used it in back when I was starting out, and it proved to be a flexible system; it's definitely nice to experiment with at least.
BBC do a variant of the above, by keeping the category that an article belongs to and the unique identifier for the entry:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24511283
Basically, they know that an article will never change its category, although it may change its title, so they just keep the general topic, which is business and the unique identifier 24511283.
In the end, what I suggest you do, as it's by far the most scalable solution is to just generate the following format:
http://localhost/blog/permalink/unique-id
The format above lets you have unique identifiers, which are important for guaranteeing singularity, and permalinks for all the search engine friendly-ness! Now if the title of the article changes, display the updated title to the user on the page, but don't do anything to the permalink, so that your URLs never change.
By also using IDs in the URL, you know for sure that you can use a permalink multiple times, and your system will still scale correctly.

Answer 2

I wrote a tutorial on this which may or may not help: http://www.rappasoft.com/tutorials/14-seo-friendly-links-with-codeigniter.html