How can I create custom SEO-friendly URLs in OpenCart?

Question

How can you customize system URLs in OpenCart? For example, I would like http://example.com/index.php?route=checkout/cart to be displayed as http://example.com/cart

I know OpenCart provides SEO URLs for products, categories, manufacturers and information pages, but it doesn't look like there is anything built-in (at least prior to version 1.5.0) for anything else.

Answer 1

It turns out this can be done with a relatively simple change to a single file. No .htaccess rewrite rules, simply patch the catalog/controller/common/seo_url.php file and add your pretty URLs to an existing database table.

---

The patch to seo_url.php:

Index: catalog/controller/common/seo_url.php
===================================================================
--- catalog/controller/common/seo_url.php   (old)
+++ catalog/controller/common/seo_url.php   (new)
@@ -48,7 +42,12 @@
                $this->request->get['route'] = 'product/manufacturer/product';
            } elseif (isset($this->request->get['information_id'])) {
                $this->request->get['route'] = 'information/information';
-           }
+           } else {
+                $query = $this->db->query("SELECT * FROM " . DB_PREFIX . "url_alias WHERE keyword = '" . $this->db->escape($this->request->get['_route_']) . "'");
+                if ($query->num_rows) {
+                    $this->request->get['route'] = $query->row['query'];
+                }
+           }

            if (isset($this->request->get['route'])) {
                return $this->forward($this->request->get['route']);
@@ -88,7 +87,15 @@
                        }

                        unset($data[$key]);
-                   }
+                   } else {
+                        $query = $this->db->query("SELECT * FROM " . DB_PREFIX . "url_alias WHERE `query` = '" . $this->db->escape($data['route']) . "'");
+
+                        if ($query->num_rows) {
+                            $url .= '/' . $query->row['keyword'];
+
+                            unset($data[$key]);
+                        }
+                   }
                }
            }

There are two edits required. The first extends the index() function to look in the url_alias table for any keyword matching $this->request->get['_route_'].

The second extends the rewrite() function to look in the url_alias table for all routes, not just those for products, manufacturers, and information pages.

---

Adding entries to the database:

INSERT INTO `url_alias` (`url_alias_id`, `query`, `keyword`) VALUES
(NULL, 'checkout/cart', 'cart');

---

That's it. http://example.com/cart should return the same thing that http://example.com/index.php?route=checkout/cart does, and OpenCart should recognize $this->url->link('checkout/cart'); and return a link to the pretty URL http://example.com/cart