Currently I have it setup like this so when a user visits www.mysite.com/test.php?u=String the user string will be set as String.
$user = $_GET['u'];
But is it possible to have it if a user searches www.mysite.com/String it would set the user value as the string.
$user
I’m guessing it would require me to edit the .htmlaccess file but I am unsure on how I would do this.
Thankyou in advance
It's .htaccess not .htmlaccess
If you want to keep the URL as something like: http://www.example.com/search but, in reality, direct to http://www.example.com/test.php?u=search then you'll probably want a RewriteRule
In this instance, to route everything that's neither a file nor a directory to test.php?u=string
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /test.php?u=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
http://www.example.com/this/is/not/a/directory will be routed to http://www.example.com/test/php?u=this/is/not/a/directory
This needs to be in an .htaccess file at your document root.
You could make a .htaccess redirect for all requests, and route them to your test.php file, which then assigns the string to your $user variable.
The script would look something like this
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /test.php?u=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
I hope you're also considering the security risks of letting a user input any string they want in your script just by visiting mysite.com/String