Routing with Named Parameters in PHP
Let's consider one of the regular expressions that process the URL:
<?php
if (preg_match('#^/page/([a-z0-9_-]+)$#', $url, $params)) {
$page = include 'view/page/show.php';
}
?>
In this case, our parameter ends up in a capture group. Then we extract the parameter value from the capture group by its number:
<?php
$slug = $params[1];
?>
This is actually not very elegant, especially if there are several parameters. A better idea would be to have parameters with names instead of numbers. To do this, we use named capture groups in our regex:
<?php
if (preg_match('#^/page/(?<slug>[a-z0-9_-]+)$#', $url, $params)) {
$page = include 'view/page/show.php';
}
?>
In this case, we can get the value of the parameter by its name:
<?php
$slug = $params['slug'];
?>
Convert the parameters in your engine's routes to named ones.
