Change the PHP Query String Variable Separator Using php.ini
As you probably know, the default PHP query string variable separator is the "&" character. One annoyance with using the "&" character is that, in order to have valid XHTML syntax, you need to output your &'s as "&". If you'd like to avoid all of that mess, you can simply change the separating character to a semi-colon (;). Here's how:
The PHP
//inside the php.ini file
arg_separator.input = ";"
//example URL: /page.php?key1=value1;key2=value2;key3=value3
There you go -- one easy step to outputting cleaner URLs. Do any of you use this method?
![Send Text Messages with PHP]()
Kids these days, I tell ya. All they care about is the technology. The video games. The bottled water. Oh, and the texting, always the texting. Back in my day, all we had was...OK, I had all of these things too. But I still don't get...
![CSS Filters]()
CSS filter support recently landed within WebKit nightlies. CSS filters provide a method for modifying the rendering of a basic DOM element, image, or video. CSS filters allow for blurring, warping, and modifying the color intensity of elements. Let's have...
![jQuery Wookmark]()
The first thing that hits you when you visit Pinterest is "Whoa, the columns are the same width and the photos are cut to fit just the way they should." Basic web users probably think nothing of it but as a developer, I can appreciate the...
![Sexy Opacity Animation with MooTools or jQuery]()
A big part of the sexiness that is Apple software is Apple's use of opacity. Like seemingly every other Apple user interface technique, it needs to be ported to the web (</fanboy>). I've put together an example of a sexy opacity animation technique...
Personally I set it to & which validates fine.
and if you don’t have access to the ini file the following works:
ini_set('arg_separator.output','&');pretty useful
Didnt know this one, thx ;)
And how Search engines see on this trick?
@wsr: Search engine sees it as the same — you wouldn’t be penalized by this.
@david: Maybe, but standart is “&” and many SE use this symbol to explode and analyze query string…
I think this will break a 3rd party CMS(like wordpress).
Think SEO
If you really want to display pretty URLs it’s better to use mod_rewrite.
Keep in mind that XML invalidates the & symbol when it’s located in the href tag.
To validate your XML you have to supply & EG: href=”?i=1&x=2″
When using this method the return value in the URI will return as “&”, and if you are using relative URLs in your application navigation, this will invalidate the DOM generated XML in most browsers and stop page load in Google Chrome (Safari).
Result: href=”/mypage.php?i=1&x=2″
Returns – EntityRef: expecting ‘;’
To fix the above the first example href=”?i=1&x=2″ should read with &
like so
href=”?i=1&x=2″