Sending url parameter through _GET and Cake convention

Posted by primeminister | Filed under Cake-Toppings

Yesterday I tried to pass an ‘url’ GET parameter to cake but I got a ‘Http controller missing‘ error. Here is the url:
http://www.example.com/images/notify?myid=456&time=782638762863&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cakephp.org
After a while I remembered that CakePHP uses the ‘url’ parameter when using mod_rewrite:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

This means that every request after the domain name is added to the url parameter. F.e.:
http://www.example.com/items/view/1234 will be transformed to http://www.example.com/index.php?url=items/view/1234. This means we cannot use the ‘url’ parameter ourselfs.

The solution is a hack in the APP/webroot/.htaccess and change the ‘url’ to something else like ‘cakephpurl’ :

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?cakephpurl=$1 [QSA,L]

and a change in the APP/webroot/index.php:

if (isset($_GET['url'])) $_GET['geturl'] = $_GET['url'];
$_GET['url'] = $_GET['cakephpurl'];

Put these lines at the top of the script and the Dispatcher will work as normal.
Now $this->params['url']['geturl'] will contain your own url parameter value. (Thnx ADmad!)

I was asking myself… Why did Cake use a common paramter name like ‘url’? Why not ‘cakephpurl’ or simular. A lot of webservices proved ?id=123&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cakephp.org in their url…

Tags: , , , ,
Permalink | Comments (10) | Oct 21, 2008

10 Responses to “Sending url parameter through _GET and Cake convention”

  1. Richard@Home Says:
    October 21st, 2008 at 15:34

    Good tip, but I would have been tempted to change the parameter’url’ you are passing to something else (‘u’ or ‘address’ perhaps).

    That way you won’t accidentally overwrite your changes when you upgrade your cake install.

    ‘course, if the URL is coming from somewhere else you have no control over, your solution is the way to go :)

  2. primeminister Says:
    October 21st, 2008 at 15:37

    @ Richard@home: Indeed came the URL from another webservice ;)

  3. teknoid Says:
    October 21st, 2008 at 18:28

    very nice solution.

    sounds like it could be a worthwhile RFC…

  4. primeminister Says:
    October 21st, 2008 at 18:37

    indeed teknoid! Still have to file an enhancement…

  5. Proxy Nations Says:
    October 23rd, 2008 at 03:08

    I just add “?domain=” at the end of my url and access via:

    $this->params['url']['domain']

    Works like a charm.

  6. primeminister Says:
    October 23rd, 2008 at 10:09

    @Proxy Nation: I can’t choose the name of the parameter. It is handed by me through a webservice and they chose ‘url’.

  7. Proxy Nations - The Best Updated Proxy Directory Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 03:42

    Dont see how its handed through a webservice, confused elaborote.

    I do fine with http://www.example.com/controller/action/?domain=http://blah.com

  8. primeminister Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:02

    @Proxy: Through console I send a requrst and a callback url.
    The external webservice sends me a filename to that callback url and this file starts with ?url=
    So I don’t have any influence on what parameters it is returning :(

  9. Proxy Nations - The Best Updated Proxy Directory Says:
    October 25th, 2008 at 04:03

    You mean like on Shell/CMD on windows or linux?

  10. primeminister Says:
    October 27th, 2008 at 21:37

    @Proxy: No, I mean sending XML to another webservice like webthumbs.bluga.net. The XML has my callback URL in it and bluga.net added the ?url parameter.

Leave a Reply