How to build CodeIgniter URL with hierarchy? - codeigniter

Question

I know this doesn't exactly match the form of www.example.com/class/function/ID/, but what I want to display to the user would make more sense.
This is what I would like to do:
www.example.com/project/id/item/item_id/
So, an example would be:
www.example.com/project/5/item/198237/
And this would be the behavior:
www.example.com/project/ --> This would show a list of projects (current implementation)
www.example.com/project/5/ --> This would show a list of items on project 5 (current implementation)
www.example.com/project/5/item/ --> This wouldn't really mean anything different than the line above. (Is that bad?)
www.example.com/project/5/item/198237/ --> This would show details for item 198237.
So, each item is directly associated with one and only one project.
The only way I can think how to do this is to bloat the "project" controller and parse the various parameters and control ALL views from that "project" controller. I'd prefer not to do this, because the model and view for an "item" are truly separate from the model and view of a "project."
The only other solution (that I am currently implementing and don't prefer) is to have the following:
www.example.com/project/5/
www.example.com/item/198237/
Is there any way to build a hierarchical URL as I showed at the beginning without bloating the "project" controller?

Answer 1

There are 3 options, sorted by how practical they can be:
Use URI Routing. Define a regular expression that will use a specific controller/method combination for each URL.
Something like that could help you, in routes.php:
$route['project/'] = 'project/viewall';
$route['project/(.+)'] = 'project/view/$1';
$route['project/(.+)/item/'] = 'project/view/$1';
$route['project/(.+)/item/(.+)'] = 'item/view/$2';
That is, considering your controllers are item and project respectively. Also note that $n in the value corresponds to the part matched in the n-th parenthesis.
Use the same controller with (or without) redirection. I guess you already considered this.
Use redirection at a lower level, such as ModRewrite on Apache servers. You could come up with a rule similar to the one in routes.php. If you are already using such a method, it wouldn't be a bad idea to use that, but only if you are already using such a thing, and preferably, in the case of Apache, in the server configuration rather than an .htaccess file.

Answer 2

You can control all of these options using routes.php (found in the config folder). You can alternatively catch any of your URI segments using the URI class, as in $this->uri->segment(2). That is if you have the URL helper loaded. That you can load by default in the autoload.php file (also in the config folder).