Thread: URL Re-Writing?

Which type of URLs are static and Dynamic. Plz explain?

If the file extension is .htm, .html, or .xhtml it is probably static content. There are some methods to pull dynamic content even with these extensions, but it is less common.

If the file extension is .php, .asp, or .shtml there is probably some dynamic content on the page. With .php and .asp the page that the browser renders may not exist as such on the server. There may just be a template for the page and the content kept in a database. When the server receives a request for the page the parser pulls the necessary data from the database, assembles it into an html page and feeds it to the server.

wink0r said it pretty well and would have to agree.

To hit on the "re-writing" portion of the thread topic, it is possible to re-write your site's URL's through things like .htaccess files to make your site, for example, either display the .php extension, or have it removed and render that to the browser...this is a bit more complex, but just for knowledge sake it's good to know what can be done.

Originally Posted by wink0r

If the file extension is .htm, .html, or .xhtml it is probably static content. There are some methods to pull dynamic content even with these extensions, but it is less common.

If the file extension is .php, .asp, or .shtml there is probably some dynamic content on the page. With .php and .asp the page that the browser renders may not exist as such on the server. There may just be a template for the page and the content kept in a database. When the server receives a request for the page the parser pulls the necessary data from the database, assembles it into an html page and feeds it to the server.

A URL that has not any of the options you mentioned for the static and dynhttp://www.kooldesignmaker.com/ecommerce-website-development then?

The ecommerce-website-development is a sub-directory. A server will look for a default page to serve with a url like this, in this case probably index.php. A look at the code shows a call to a .php page so the page is definitely dynamic.

Part of the set-up of the server is a default file list. If no default file is found the server will return a listing of all the files in the directory.

So it means you could easily distinguished whether if the URL is static or dynamic just by seeing its file extension?

Not necessarily easily. A .php file extension would usually indicate a dynamic page, but PHP can pull data from other extensions so the data file may have an extension that would normally be associated with static pages. There can also be rewrite rules so that an .html extension is rewritten to .php and contains dynamic content. Files with a .php or .asp extension would usually indicate dynamic content, but other file extensions don't necessarily exclude dynamic content.