[Sigia-l] mixing apples and oranges and tomatoes

[Ziya Oz]

"diannes at dbfields.com" wrote:

> Um... not quite true. There are really two scenarios
> possible:
> 1) user has cookies enabled
> 2) user has cookies disabled

(Since this is the fourth response I got on the list and privately) I wish
people would think through the issue at hand rather than generalizing.

The original poster asked about what I'll call 'URL beautification' and not
session management. You may, for instance, have an ID in a URL that has
nothing to do with a session. Or you may have a very long, multi-directory
virtual or real file path without an ID in sight. Or you may have nothing
but a numerical IP address and a numerical ID. The question is not about
session management or even correlating a unique ID with, say, a unique page.
The question is, how do you convert long and ugly URLs into pretty ones?

So IF you are using cookies for session management AND you don't need other
variables in your URLs, heck, you don't have the problem originally asked:
your URLs don't need to be long and ugly because of unwieldy ID numbers.

If you are NOT using cookies AND you're not retarded enough to encapsulate
*every* link in a Form, then guess what, you're going to be dealing with
those pesky, long, ugly URLs.

Consequently, my suggestion was to take advantage of the ridiculously easy
option of factoring out the file path up to the ungainly ID and simplify and
prettify it via mod_rewrite (or Welcome or whatever).

That's about all I have to say on this matter.

Best,

Ziya