PHP: Best way to forward a user to a different URL dynamically

I'm helping put together a site that's going to host content for different regions on the same domain. So example:

www.example.com/us/

www.example.com/uk/

www.example.com/fr/

etc.

I have a system in place that asks the user which site they want to view (and then stores their preference in a cookie). My question is: If they visit a URL (e.g.: www.example.com/us/contact.php) and their preference cookie says /fr/, how do I best forward them to www.example.com/fr/contact.php?

The system can read what site region they're on and what their cookie says. So the information we would know would be: Site: US and Cookie: FR.

I was thinking of using $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] and using regex to get "contact.php" from the URL. Then using header("Location: [url]");, but I understand that Location doesn't work if any text has already been passed to the browser... which creates all sorts of problems.

Edit:

Here's some code to explain the problem more clearly:

<?php
// Get variable contents for $cookieRegion and $siteRegion
if($cookieRegion != '') { // If Cookie has been previous set
    if($cookieRegion != $siteRegion) { // If Cookie pref clashes with site URL
       // Forward to correct URL
  开发者_运维百科  }
}
else { ?>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function(){
            // Display modal window asking user preference
        });
    </script>        
<?php } ?>

So the <script> tag would be placed before the document start... not a good idea!

What's the best way to get around this problem?

Or, is there a better way of handling the whole problem that I could implement instead?

---

<?php
// Use this to open modal window.
$wrongRegion = FALSE;

// if there is a cookie...
if (isset($_COOKIE['region']))
{
    // I am using preg_match to ensure we are getting right parameters...
    // Sorry I am not good with Regex. You can set a better patern.
    preg_match("#/(.*?)/(.*?)\.php#is", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $m);

    // Okay! $m[1][0] is the region code on the uri. lets check if its same with cookie
    if ($_COOKIE['region'] != $m[1][0])
        $wrongRegion = TRUE;
}

....... (codes goes here)

// to where you put the modal window code:

if ($wrongRegion == TRUE)
{
    // put the modal window code.
}

so you can add a check to preg_match. It prevents to execute rest of the code.

---

Put the following code, or some equivalent code before ANY HTML or linebreaks.

<?php
# This will split the request URI into an array with all the components between slashes in the URI
$request_parameters = explode('/', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_URI']);

# Now, hopefully $request_parameters[1] contains the language abbreviation/code
if ( $request_parameters[1] != $cookieLanguage ) {
    # Replace the erroneous language with the language saved in the cookie, 
    # reassemble the URI and send the client to the correct location
    $request_parameters[1] = $cookieLanguage;
    header('Location: ' . implode('/', $request_parameters);
}

If there is not any cookie set

1. Show the default page e.g. /en-US/contact/
2. Let the client choose language
   • If and when the client chooses a language; set the language cookie and reload the page.

---

Read the cookie first, then parse where the user wants to go (contact.php), then redirect it with Location: before sending output, so at the beginning of index.php

---

This is actually very simple.

At the beginning of your script (before any html.. especially the tag!) do something along these lines:

 <?

 if $locationCookie == 'fr') {

 header("Location: /fr");

 //or alternatively
 //header("Location: /fr/contact.php");

 }

 //also, let's say they are on the us/contact.php page and you want them to go to the fr/contact.php page

 header('Location: ../'.$language_cookie.'/contact.php');

 ?>

What this will do is redirect the user to the SAME PAGE they are currently on, but will have the $_GET variable of language equal to fr. Then, in your page you should check for this variable and make the proper changes accordingly.