How do I make a custom URL parser with Apache?

Question

I heard this can be done with the web.config file. I want to make it so, for instance, my URL http://help.BHStudios.org/site might go to http://BHStudios.org/help.php?section=site, or http://i.BHStudios.org/u3Hiu might redirect to some other URL stored in a database with the hash u3Hiu as the key, or if something goes wrong and the internal file structure is exposed like http://Kyli.BHStudios.org/http/bhstudios/v2/self/index.php (something that happens with GoDaddy's servers for whatever reason) it'll change it to its intended URL http://Kyli.BHStudios.org before that's exposed tot he user.

Since I've never done this before, could you please also explain why you gave the answer you did?

Answer 1

A few Apache mod_rewrite rules in either your servers httpd.conf or in a .htaccess file, in your htdocs directory will do the majority of what you want e.g.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase  /

# Default Rule - for non physical objects (not a file or directory): 
# Internally rewrite (user won't see the URL) to /index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^ /index.php [L]

#If the Browser request contains a .php, instruct the browser to remove it.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST}      \.php      [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)\.php$       http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1         [R=301,NC,L]

# Specific rule
RewriteRule ^/?site   /help.php?section=site 

The masking of real file system objects will not be perfect, and slightly pointless, as a user just needs to right click and view source on any served page, to obtain the actual URL's.