CFLib.org – Common Function Library Project

Description:
The purpose of the parseURLData UDF is to give web developers an alternate way of encoding and retrieving data from URLs. Typically parameters data is sent via a URL using name/value pairs prefaced with a questions mark and separated by ampersands. http://www.test.org/somepage.cfm?id=100&type=column There is nothing wrong with this format but many search engines will not search and store "dynamic" pages with parameter data in the URLs. Clients quite often require that there sites are search engine friendly so you need some way to encode URLs so that they will not get excluded by search engines that do follow this practice. The parseURLData UDF allows you to create URLs that do not use the question mark and ampersand to delimit data but still store and retrieve data from your URLS. Instead of using URLs with the older format http://www.test.org/somepage.cfm?id=100&type=column you can now delineate name/value pairs using a forward slash http://www.test.org/somepage.cfm/id/100/type/column You can also store and read the name/value pairs in a "staggered" format http://www.test.org/somepage.cfm/id/type/100/column

Return Values:
Returns either a struct of data or an error string.

Example:

<cfset paramData = parseURLData("linear","+")>

Parameters:

Full UDF Source:

/**
 * An alternative way to retreive data from a URL.
 * 
 * @param listType      Defines how the URL vars are encoded. Values are either "linear" (index.cfm/foo/1/goo/2) or "staggered" (foo/goo/1/2). Default is linear. (Optional)
 * @param strParamDelimiter      What character is used to split values. (Optional)
 * @return Returns either a struct of data or an error string. 
 * @author Zac Belado (zac@bayleaf.com) 
 * @version 1, July 14, 2005 
 */
function parseURLData() {
        
        var strListType = "";
        var strParamDelimiter = "";
        var strPathInfo = "";
        var thisLen  = 0;
        var URLLen = 0;
        var URLData = "";
        var evenNumberOfParams = true;
        var containsDelim = 0;
        var paramList = "";
        var paramStruct = structNew();
        var offset = 0;

        // get the listType if one was provided
        if (arrayLen(arguments) eq 1) {
        
            strListType = arguments[1];

        } else If(arrayLen(arguments) eq 2) {
        
            strListType = arguments[1];
            strParamDelimiter = arguments[2];
            
        }
        
        // see if we can user the listType arg
        if (trim(strListType) neq "" AND NOT isNumeric(strListType) ) {
            strListType = strListType;
        } else {
            strListType = "linear";
        }
        
        // see if we can user the listType arg
        if (trim(strParamDelimiter) neq "" AND NOT isNumeric(strParamDelimiter) ) {
            if (len(strParamDelimiter) eq 1) {
                strParamDelimiter = strParamDelimiter;
            } else {
                strParamDelimiter = "/";
            }
        } else {
            strParamDelimiter = "/";
        }
        
        // default back to "linear" if the list type isn't staggered or linear
        if (strListType neq "linear" AND strListType neq "staggered") {
            strListType = "linear";
        }

        // get the path info from either path_info or request_uri
        if (isDefined("CGI.path_info")) {
            strPathInfo = CGI.path_info;
        } else {
            strPathInfo = CGI.request_uri;
        }

        thisLen = len(CGI.script_name);
        URLLen =  len(strPathInfo);
        
        if (URLLen eq 0) return paramStruct;

        //URLData = right(strPathInfo, URLLen - thisLen - 1);
        urlData = strPathInfo;
        // make sure there is the required data
        containsDelim = Find(strParamDelimiter, URLData);
        
        if (containsDelim) {
        
            // it does so make a list and read them in
            paramList = listChangeDelims(URLData, ",", strParamDelimiter);
            paramLimit = listLen(paramList);
            
            // trim the list if its got an odd number of items
            if ( NOT (int(paramLimit/2) eq (paramLimit/2))) {
                evenNumberOfParams = false;
            }

            if (strListType eq "linear") {
                
                // check to make sure that there are an even number of params
                if (NOT evenNumberOfParams) {
                    // cut the last entry off as this list has an odd number of elements
                    paramList = listDeleteAt(paramList, paramLimit);
                    paramLimit = paramLimit - 1;
                }
                
                // param and param data are in pairs
                for ( i = 1; i lte paramLimit; i = i + 2) {
                    structInsert (paramStruct, listGetAt(paramList, i), listGetAt(paramList, i+1));
                }
                
            } else {
                
                // staggered which means the params are listed then the param data
                offset = paramLimit / 2;

                // check to make sure that there are an even number of params
                if (NOT evenNumberOfParams) {
                   offset = fix(paramLimit / 2);
                   paramList = listDeleteAt(paramList, offset + 1);
                }

                 for ( i = 1; i lte offset; i = i + 1) {
                    structInsert (paramStruct, listGetAt(paramList, i), listGetAt(paramList, i + offset));
                }
                
            }
            
            // return a copy of the struct and clear the local version
            return structCopy(paramStruct);
            
        } 
    }