note 56909 deleted from reserved.variables by felipe

Note Submitter: jeromenelson at gmail dot com 

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You can take advantage of 404 error to an usable redirection using REQUEST_URI ...

For example the following program can retrieve the information for the 'search_string', for a given URI:  http://servername/profiles/search_string, even though there's no such path.
Do the following steps..

Step 1: Edit Apache config:  set
        ErrorDocument 404 "/missing.php"  
Step 2: Write the missing.php as follows ...

<?
$mainPath = "/profiles/";                                       // Example: http://servername/profiles/search_string
$mpLength = strlen( $mainPath  );                                
$request_uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

if ( $mainPath != substr($request_uri,0,$mpLength) ) {          // Check if the given URI is valid
    echo "404 Page Not Found !";
    exit();
}

$name = substr ($request_uri , $mpLength ) ;                    // Extract the string to be searched

echo "You have searched for the profile of Mr. $name";

/** Here you can write the code to retrieve and display
     the $name's  information from the database
*/
?>

Step 3: Now try http://servername/profiles/Jerry
    (of course, there shouldn't be a file/folder in the server like "DOCROOT/profiles/Jerry" )

     output: You have searched for the profile of Mr. Jerry

God Bless You!