html file w/ no file extension

[kruser]

Hello,

Does anyone have an idea of how wikipedia makes files without file extensions open in browsers correctly.

If I create a HTML file and save it without the file extension .html it will open correctly in Internet Explorer but not in Netscape or Mozilla.

[wige]

This is done server side, you need to set the mime type of the file through .htaccess if it is an Apache server. However, I would not be suprised if the wiki system used mod_rewrite to change /some_entry to /showEntry.php?s=some_entry. Because Apache knows what mime type to send for the PHP file, no modification has to be made, even though the outside user doesn't see the extension.

[torpengkute]

Originally Posted by wige

This is done server side, you need to set the mime type of the file through .htaccess if it is an Apache server. However, I would not be suprised if the wiki system used mod_rewrite to change /some_entry to /showEntry.php?s=some_entry. Because Apache knows what mime type to send for the PHP file, no modification has to be made, even though the outside user doesn't see the extension.

really? can you give some example...

[fbnewtz]

It is actually pretty easy. We do it as well. Makes for nice clean URL's.

The problem with giving examples is there are different requirements for different versions of apache.

But you will basically want to create a PHP file that will pull information from your database. From there you will want to save the file without a file name. For example:

test.php would be saved as just test.

From there you would put a set of lines like this in your .htaccess file or in your httpd.conf file if you had access to that:

<Files test>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

Now your test file would need to parse the URL properly and then use the extra "directories" to pass as parameters to the query or whatever else you wanted to do. Such as this:

www.test.com/test/var1/var2/var3

$chunk = explode("/", $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']);

Then you can reference each different variable as:

$chunk[1] = var1
$chunk[2] = var2
$chunk[3] = var3

etc..

From there just use that information as parameters in your Query so you pull the right data from your database.


It is pretty easy and there is a tiny bit of information on the web relating to this, but it is out there.

Good luck,

Fred

[gerard79]

if you make a folder names say "specials" and have a index.html file in there you can link to say:

h t t p ;// yourdomain.com/special

you will see the contents of that index.html
If you would want it to go to another location, just put a redirect in that index.html

It is a simple solution but it works.

[PaulMycroft]

Originally Posted by kruser

If I create a HTML file and save it without the file extension .html it will open correctly in Internet Explorer but not in Netscape or Mozilla.

I *think* Kruser is asking how a web page with no suffix appears in some browsers but not others, not how directory and default pages are handled? Correct me if I am wrong.

If you are asking how a web page that should be called "www.domain.com/pagename.html" but is called "www.domain.com/pagename" (not a directory), the answer is that some browsers are more forgiving than others.

For example, if you do not close a tag correctly in a web page's code (e.g. a table cell), that page will break in some but not other browsers.

Hope that helps.

[wige]

Originally Posted by PaulMycroft

If you are asking how a web page that should be called "www.domain.com/pagename.html" but is called "www.domain.com/pagename" (not a directory), the answer is that some browsers are more forgiving than others.

This is somewhat the case, but there is another factor on the server side. Wikipedia for example does not use file extensions, but all of their pages display properly in all major browsers. The reason is that the file extension is irrelevant on web documents. The server includes a header that tells the browser how the file should be rendered - as an image, a text file, a pdf file, a web page, etc. If you do not take special measures to cause the server to label files without extensions as web pages, the server will say that they are plain text. Some browsers will display plain text files containing HTML as web pages, others display the files as plain text.

[kruser]

Very Cool...

As per the suggestions:

I created a .htaccess file with one line:
ForceType application/x-httpd-php

uploaded .htaccess to test directory

then I created an html file and saved it with out a file extension to the test directory


It works!!!

Thanks for the cutting edge information everybody!!

[kruser]

Does the .htaccess line
ForceType application/x-httpd-php

Does that mean the browser will see the file as a php page?


Then would:
ForceType application/x-httpd-html

the browser see as an html?

[activeco]

Originally Posted by kruser

Then would:
ForceType application/x-httpd-html

the browser see as an html?

'ForceType text/html' should do that.

[gerard79]

Does this all work with PHP-CGI?