In the above example, two named parameters are found in the route part of the rules: `controller` and `action`. The former matches a controller ID that's either "post" or "comment", while the latter matches an action ID that could be "create", "update", or "delete". You may name the parameters differently as long as they do not conflict with any GET parameters that may appear in your URLs.
Using the above rules, the URL `/index.php/post/123/create` will be parsed as the route `post/create` with `GET` parameter
`id=123`. Given the route `comment/list` and `GET` parameter `page=2`, Yii can create a URL `/index.php/comments?page=2`.
### Parameterizing Hostnames
It is also possible to include hostnames in the rules for parsing and creating URLs. One may extract part of the hostname
to be a `GET` parameter. This is especially useful for handling subdomains. For example, the URL
`http://admin.example.com/en/profile` may be parsed into GET parameters `user=admin` and `lang=en`. On the other hand,
rules with hostnames may also be used to create URLs with parameterized hostnames.
In order to use parameterized hostnames, simply declare the URL rules while including the host info:
The concept of *URL management* in Yii is fairly simple: the application simply uses internal routes and parameters everywhere. The framework itself will then translate routes into URLs, and vice versa, according to the URL manager's configuration. This approach allows you to make site-wide changes to URLs merely by
editing a single configuration file, without ever touching any application code.
Internal Routes
---------------
When implementing an application using Yii, you'll deal with *internal* routes, often referred to as "routes and parameters".
Each controller and controller action has a corresponding internal route, such as `site/index` or `user/create`.
In the first example, `site` is the *controller ID*, while `index` is the *action ID*. In the
second example, `user` is the controller ID and `create` is the action ID.
If the controller belongs to a *module*, the
internal route is prefixed with the module ID: for example, `blog/post/index` represents a blog module, the module's `post`
controller, and the `index` action.
Creating URLs
-------------
The most important rule for creating URLs in your site is to always do so through the URL manager. The URL manager is a built-in application component fittingly named `urlManager`. This component is accessible from both web and console applications via
`\Yii::$app->urlManager`. The component makes available two methods for creating URLs:
-`createUrl($params)`
-`createAbsoluteUrl($params, $schema = null)`
The `createUrl` method creates an URL relative to the application root, such as `/index.php/site/index/`.
The `createAbsoluteUrl` method creates an URL that beings with with the proper protocol and hostname:
`http://www.example.com/index.php/site/index`. Relative URLs, and the `createUrl` method are suitable for internal application URLs, while absolute URLs, and the `createAbsoluteUrl` method, are appropriate when you need to create URLs for external resources, such as connecting to third party services, sending email,
generating RSS feeds, etc.
Both methods can be passed parameters used to further customize the URL, such as appending values to pass along as part of the request.
In order to simplify URL creation, Yii has the [[yii\helpers\Url]] helper. Assuming the current URL is `/index.php?r=management/default/users&id=10`, the following
`/index.php/post/2008/a%20sample%20post`. The third rule is applied.
- Calling `Url::toRoute('post/read')` generates `/index.php/post/read`. None of the rules is applied; convention is used instead.
In summary, when using `createUrl` to generate a URL, the route and the `GET` parameters passed to the method are used to
decide which URL rule will be applied. If every parameter associated with a rule can be found in the `GET` parameters passed
to `createUrl`, and if the route of the rule also matches the route parameter, the rule will be used to generate the URL.
If the `GET` parameters passed to `Url::toRoute` are more than those required by a rule, the additional parameters will
appear in the query string. For example, the call `Url::toRoute(['post/read', 'id' => 100, 'year' => 2008])`, will
generate `/index.php/post/100?year=2008`.
As mentioned earlier, the other purpose of URL rules is to parse the requesting URLs. Naturally, this is the inverse of URL creation. For example, when a user requests for `/index.php/post/100`, the second rule in the above example
will apply, which resolves to the route `post/read` with the `GET` parameter `['id' => 100]` (accessible via
`Yii::$app->request->get('id')`).
### Parameterizing Routes
Rules may also make use of named parameters as part of a route. Named parameters allow a rule to be applied to multiple routes based
on matching criteria. Named parameters may also help reduce the number of rules needed for an application, and thus improve the overall
performance.
The following example rules illustrate how to parameterize routes with named parameters:
In the above example, two named parameters are found in the route part of the rules: `controller` and `action`. The former matches a controller ID that's either "post" or "comment", while the latter matches an action ID that could be "create", "update", or "delete". You may name the parameters differently as long as they do not conflict with any GET parameters that may appear in your URLs.
Using the above rules, the URL `/index.php/post/123/create` will be parsed as the route `post/create` with `GET` parameter
`id=123`. Given the route `comment/list` and `GET` parameter `page=2`, Yii can create a URL `/index.php/comments?page=2`.
### Parameterizing Hostnames
It is also possible to include hostnames in the rules for parsing and creating URLs. One may extract part of the hostname
to be a `GET` parameter. This is especially useful for handling subdomains. For example, the URL
`http://admin.example.com/en/profile` may be parsed into GET parameters `user=admin` and `lang=en`. On the other hand,
rules with hostnames may also be used to create URLs with parameterized hostnames.
In order to use parameterized hostnames, simply declare the URL rules while including the host info:
Complimentary to creating URLs Yii also handles transforming custom URLs back into internal routes and parameters.
### Strict URL parsing
By default if there's no custom rule for a URL and the URL matches the default format such as `/site/page`, Yii tries to run the corresponding controller's action. This behavior can be disabled so if there's no custom rule match, a 404 not found error will be produced immediately.
```php
<?php
return[
// ...
'components'=>[
'urlManager'=>[
'enableStrictParsing'=>true,
],
],
];
```
Creating your own rule classes
------------------------------
[[yii\web\UrlRule]] class is used for both parsing URL into parameters and creating URL based on parameters. Despite
the fact that default implementation is flexible enough for the majority of projects, there are situations when using
your own rule class is the best choice. For example, in a car dealer website, we may want to support the URL format like
`/Manufacturer/Model`, where `Manufacturer` and `Model` must both match some data in a database table. The default rule
class will not work because it mostly relies on statically declared regular expressions which have no database knowledge.
We can write a new URL rule class by extending from [[yii\web\UrlRule]] and use it in one or multiple URL rules. Using
the above car dealer website as an example, we may declare the following URL rules in application config:
