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?
![5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed]()
The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs. Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers. Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...
![Create Spinning Rays with CSS3: Revisited]()
![MooTools Font-Size Scroller with Cookie Save]()
Providing users as many preferences as possible always puts a smile on the user's face. One of those important preferences is font size. I can see fine but the next guy may have difficulty with the font size I choose. That's why...
![HTML5 Placeholder Styling with CSS]()
Last week I showed you how you could style selected text with CSS. I've searched for more interesting CSS style properties and found another: INPUT placeholder styling. Let me show you how to style placeholder text within INPUTelements with some unique CSS code.
The CSS
Firefox...
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″