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FWIW at Etsy I built and subsequently helped completely dismantle a minimal PHP routing framework. We just used .htaccess and php files. PHP/Apache affords you

FWIW at Etsy I built and subsequently helped completely dismantle a minimal PHP routing framework. We just used .htaccess and php files. PHP/Apache affords you a fast, simple alternative, and what you gain with a framework (route lookup for an object) just isn't compelling enough IMO to justify the added overhead and complexity. I think the endless proliferation of PHP microrouters (including mine, RIP) is people porting Django and Rails features to PHP without applying critical thinking first. (Myself included.)

127001brewer 12y ago
How complicated were the Etsy routes? And were the added overhead and complexity? And I know it is a pain to restart Apache each time there's a change to the configuration file, but does anyone know the time differences between a PHP router and Apache rewrites?
- icedchai 12y ago
  Put it in .htaccess. No restarts needed.
  - 127001brewer 12y ago
    That's correct - I was thinking of using an Apache VirtualHost file. (Isn't using the .htaccess file slower(?) than using the VirtualHost file?)
    - icedchai 12y ago
      It is slower, since .htaccess is parsed on every request. (However, it is probably faster than routing through PHP code.)
    - rdam 12y ago
      You can reload Apache without a restart (apache2/httpd graceful/reload depending on your distro).
- mcfunley 12y ago
  Basically just "/listing/<a number>/<some ignored text> goes to listing.php", multiplied by a thousand pages or so. There's overhead associated with doing the bookkeeping necessary to compute the route lookups. In practice, it's not that awful to just write a function like "get_url($listing_id)" by hand, and debugging this later is much more straightforward. We didn't need to restart httpd (in development at least) to add to .htaccess. For production deploys maybe we were configured to do this, but that's hidden from development.
yowmamasita 12y ago
then I think what would be best here is a command line tool to manage your routes on .htaccess or nginx configs.

127001brewer 12y ago

How complicated were the Etsy routes? And were the added overhead and complexity? And I know it is a pain to restart Apache each time there's a change to the configuration file, but does anyone know the time differences between a PHP router and Apache rewrites?

icedchai 12y ago
Put it in .htaccess. No restarts needed.
- 127001brewer 12y ago
  That's correct - I was thinking of using an Apache VirtualHost file. (Isn't using the .htaccess file slower(?) than using the VirtualHost file?)
  - icedchai 12y ago
    It is slower, since .htaccess is parsed on every request. (However, it is probably faster than routing through PHP code.)
  - rdam 12y ago
    You can reload Apache without a restart (apache2/httpd graceful/reload depending on your distro).
mcfunley 12y ago
Basically just "/listing/<a number>/<some ignored text> goes to listing.php", multiplied by a thousand pages or so. There's overhead associated with doing the bookkeeping necessary to compute the route lookups. In practice, it's not that awful to just write a function like "get_url($listing_id)" by hand, and debugging this later is much more straightforward. We didn't need to restart httpd (in development at least) to add to .htaccess. For production deploys maybe we were configured to do this, but that's hidden from development.

yowmamasita 12y ago

then I think what would be best here is a command line tool to manage your routes on .htaccess or nginx configs.