How to use seo urls in cakephp without the id?

@genevieve_boehm 

To use SEO-friendly URLs in CakePHP without the ID, follow these steps:

Step 1: Enable mod_rewrite Ensure that mod_rewrite is enabled on your server. This can usually be done by uncommenting the line in your Apache configuration file.

Step 2: Enable CakePHP's routing Make sure that CakePHP's routing is enabled in your CakePHP application's configuration file (config/routes.php). The default setting should be:

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$routes->fallbacks(DashedRoute::class);

This allows CakePHP to automatically generate and parse SEO-friendly URLs.

Step 3: Configure routes In the same configuration file (config/routes.php), you can add custom route configurations to define how your SEO-friendly URLs should be generated and handled.

For example, if you want to use the article title as part of the URL instead of the ID, you can add a route like this:

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$routes->connect('/articles/:slug', ['controller' => 'Articles', 'action' => 'view'], ['pass' => ['slug']]);

This route configuration specifies that the URL pattern "/articles/:slug" should be mapped to the "view" action of the "Articles" controller. The "slug" parameter will be passed to the action.

Step 4: Update controller actions In your controller's action that handles the SEO-friendly URL, you need to fetch the data based on the passed parameter (e.g., "slug") instead of the ID.

For example, in the "ArticlesController" view action:

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public function view($slug)
{
    $article = $this->Articles->findBySlug($slug)->firstOrFail();
    $this->set(compact('article'));
}

Step 5: Update link generation When generating links to your SEO-friendly URLs, you can use CakePHP's "HtmlHelper" functions.

For example, to generate a link to the "view" action of the "Articles" controller with the article's slug as the parameter:

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echo $this->Html->link($article->title, ['controller' => 'Articles', 'action' => 'view', $article->slug]);

By following these steps, your CakePHP application should generate and handle SEO-friendly URLs without relying on the ID in the URL.