README

Hi, thanks for checking out Routes! Routes is low-level PHP class for defining and using URL routing patterns similar to CodeIgniter. In fact Routes is based on CodeIgniter's implementation.

Installation

Install via Composer from your command line:

$ composer require simonhamp/routes

Usage

To use Routes, you simply need to place the class somewhere accessible within your application. Then you need to define some routes and register them:

<?php

include 'vendor/autoload.php';

use SimonHamp\Routes;

Routes::add(array(
    'testing/(:num)' => 'test/$1',
    'posts/(:any)'   => 'news/$1'
));

$origin = 'testing/1';

echo Routes::route($origin);
// -> 'test/1'

Why?

In-App Routing, as opposed to URL Rewriting (e.g. .htaccess/mod_rewrite), is a popular method for defining patterns for URLs in web sites and applications. It allows the developer to make an app appear one way, but underneath go another. It's most commonly found in MVC web frameworks (Rails, Sinatra, CakePHP, CodeIgniter et al). Routing is simple, but powerful, and the concept is also really useful in other situations outside the context of a framework.

There are other attempts at portable routing libraries, but they're too tied into the MVC framework schema to be useful outside. That's where Routes comes in. You could use it as your routing system for yet another framework or you can keep it completely separate.

Using Routes you can define complex routes using simple instructions and get the rewritten URL as a return variable in your code. So it doesn't need a specific web server. It doesn't do anything fancy, it just rewrites the URLs you give it according to the rules you supply, in the order you supplied them. Simple.

Hope you find it useful! :)

Questions? Comments? Feel free to raise an issue

But I want a real router!

Then may I suggest the awesome FastRoute by @nikic. It's really fast, has some awesome features, and includes a dispatcher that will pass the various parts of your routes to a method you define.