CodeIgniter handle URL segments - codeigniter

Question

I keep thinking about how to deal with URLs and pages with CI but I can't think to a good way to do this.
I'm trying to handle url like this:
site.com/shop (shop is my controller)
site.com/shop/3 (page 3)
site.com/shop/cat/4 (categorie and page 4)
site.com/shop/cat/subcat/3 (cat & subcat & page)
Is there any good way to do this ?

Answer 1

You could create controller functions to handle:
shop and shop pages
categories and category pages
subcategories and subcategory pages
Controller functions
In your shop controller you could have the following functions:
function index($page = NULL)
{
if ($page === NULL)
{
//load default shop page
}
else //check if $page is number (valid parameter)
{
//load shop page supplied as parameter
}
}
function category($category = NULL, $page = 1)
{
//$page is page number to be displayed, default 1
//don't trust the values in the URL, so validate them
}
function subcategory($category = NULL, $subcategory = NULL, $page = 1)
{
//$page is page number to be displayed, default 1
//don't trust the values in the URL, so validate them
}
Routing
You could then setup the following routes in application/config/routes.php. These routes will map the URLs to the appropriate controller functions. The regex will allow look for values
//you may want to change the regex, depending on what category values are allowed
//Example: site.com/shop/1
$route['shop/(:num)'] = "shop/index/$1";
//Example: site.com/shop/electronics
$route['shop/([a-z]+)'] = "shop/category/$1";
//Example: site.com/shop/electronics/2
$route['shop/([a-z]+)/(:num)'] = "shop/category/$1/$2";
//Example: site.com/shop/electronics/computers
$route['shop/([a-z]+)/([a-z]+)'] = "shop/subcategory/$1/$2";
//Example: site.com/shop/electronics/computers/4
$route['shop/([a-z]+)/([a-z]+)/(:num)'] = "shop/subcategory/$1/$2/$3";