URL redirection question

[Ivan Shmakov]

[Cross-posting to news:comp.infosystems.www.misc, for reasons.]

I just got a bill on my phone, which said "To pay this bill - go to
www.<whatever>" . When I went to the site - it said stuff like
"Welcome Mr. John Doe", ie. it *knew from the URL* that it was me!
I'm kind of trying to figure out how this was architected - can you
guys help? :)
MY brain suggested something like this: whatever was after the "/"
in the URL (something like e2gbm853dc or whatever) was an ARGUMENT -
when someone types that in to the browser, it redirects to
script.php (or whatever) on the server with THAT string as the
argument. Which, by querying for that row in a SQL database or
something, brings up my name in the company's database..... am I on
the right track here?

Yes, that's basically how it works. Webservers typically use rewrite
https://www.example.com/paybill/e2gbm853dc
https://www.example.com/paybill.php?id=e2gbm853dc
and then the script does the database lookup to find you.

Or the Web server could be configured so that whenever it sees a
URI starting with "/paybill", it starts (or contacts, for
FastCGI) the script, which then has access to either the
original URI in its entirety, or at least the part after the
script's name.

I'm pretty sure that configuring Apache in such a way may be a
matter of a couple of lines. (Like SetHandler, etc.)

[Eli the Bearded]

Post by Ivan Shmakov
[Cross-posting to news:comp.infosystems.www.misc, for reasons.]

Hellow from ciwm!

Post by Ivan Shmakov

Yes, that's basically how it works. Webservers typically use rewrite
https://www.example.com/paybill/e2gbm853dc
https://www.example.com/paybill.php?id=e2gbm853dc

That sounds like such an old-fashioned way to do it. Why bother with a
rewrite when you can just use the original?

Post by Ivan Shmakov
Or the Web server could be configured so that whenever it sees a
URI starting with "/paybill", it starts (or contacts, for
FastCGI) the script, which then has access to either the
original URI in its entirety, or at least the part after the
script's name.

In modern web frameworks, the local part of the URL (the URI) is called
a "route" and the routing table in the framework is consulted. Consider
Ruby on Rails:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html

The very first example is relevant here. Some other frameworks might
solve this by having the server always return the same page for all of
/paybill/*, and a javascript routing table examine the URL and look up
the content to fill in to the page. For example, Ember:

https://guides.emberjs.com/v2.12.0/routing/defining-your-routes/

Look at the Dynamic Routes section.

Elijah
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the wab has so many ways to ensnare you now