Looking for a reasonable approach to a page tree scenario...

[thetuningspoon]

I'm working on an application in ProcessWire which allows users to have their own publicly accessible storefronts. I'm struggling to figure out how this should be represented in the URL/page tree.

The ideal finished product would put the user's storefront at a unique url like https://www.example.com/username/store/

The cart, checkout, and products pages would follow the same structure:

https://www.example.com/username/store/cart/

https://www.example.com/username/store/checkout/

https://www.example.com/username/store/product/

And so on...

The problem is that I don't want to have to create a whole new section of the page tree for each new user. So, in effect, I want a url segment (the /username/ bit) that appears before the page name rather than after it. As far as I know, this isn't possible in PW.

Another approach would be to use a query string variable to identify the user (e.g. https://www.example.com/store/?user=1234 ). This solves the problem of having to create a different tree for every user, but the URL is not nearly as convenient for customers, and it would require passing the parameter through all of my links.

I suppose I could use query string parameters but then provide a more friendly URL to redirect there, but that doesn't feel quite right to me either.

 

Anyway, I'm sort of thinking out loud here.  Any other ideas?

[LostKobrakai]

Maybe use url segments for the whole url and just render the pages located elsewhere based in the infos supplied by the url.

[mr-fan]

like @LostKobrakai wrote are url segments for the whole store your weapon of choice...

if you could live with http://www.example.com/store/username/  and then /username/chart/....and so on

you could all serve it from the /store/ template as routing to the needed data and users...

[thetuningspoon]

Thanks, that could be a good option. It doesn't feel very "ProcessWirey" or very scalable to me though. But I guess I'm not even sure how this would typically be handled outside of PW, either.

[mr-fan]

4 hours ago, thetuningspoon said:

It doesn't feel very "ProcessWirey" or very scalable to me though

if you dive deepinto URL segments you will feel some "ProcessWires", too

It's just to build the urls/structur that you need independently from your content storage in page tree...this is very scalable since you can optimize your pagetree (for editors, contenttype, datastructure) and the frontend presentation seperately.