[wp-hackers] 2 Questions: $_REQUEST equivalent and using GET in mod_rewrite

[Alex Andrews]

Hey all

I am developing a plugin for Wordpress for a Creative Commons etc
based record company (plugin will be released under GPL when done).
This is my first Wordpress plugin, so I need a bit of a helping hand.
Without much further ado, two questions.

1.
I have developed the plugin so far as an external PHP application,
albeit one that require(s) all the appropriate Wordpress includes. Now
I wish to intergrate it into Wordpress. At the moment, I use $_REQUEST
to parse user input and return things. Looking at the Codex, it seems
that Wordpress has a more advanced way of doing this that santises the
data. Can someone walk me through it?

2.
More importantly, I want to use mod_rewrite to map onto this plugin. I
know Wordpress can do this, but I am not sure how. Here is the schema
I imagine, artists.php being replaced by the correct wordpress plugin
hookup (some suggestion here might be helpful two)

http://domain.com/artists/ -> launches the plugin - akin to
http://domain.com/artists.php
http://domain.com/artists/artistname/ ->
http://domain.com/artists.php?artist_slug=artistname
http://domain.com/artists/artistname/bio ->
http://domain.com/artists.php?artist_slug=artistname&mode=bio

These are the basic types. How do I go about doing this?

Thanks very much indeed.

Regards

Alex