Rewrite Rules

[dklynn]

matt,

Too many recent posts have addressed the question of (.*) gobbling up EVERYTHING in the URL to get a question as to why a trailing RewriteRule won't work!

As usual, though, you'll get rid of your problem by specifying WHICH characters you are looking for (rather than EVERYTHING) by using "([a-zA-Z0-9]+)" to specify letters and digits.

The same applies to your redirected scripts and their relative links. Either use absolute links OR just use HTML's BASE tag to retain your relative links.

Regards,

DK

[toasti]

hello again...i've almost got my first one working

i was to turn a url like:

www.38.co.za/clubs/club?id=olde65
to
www.38.co.za/clubs/olde65

i have the following:

Options -MultiViews
Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ([a-zA-Z0-9.])$ club.php?id=$1 
#RewriteRule ^olde65 club.php?id=olde65

(the commented out one works...)

The redirecting is working, but i'm not getting my id variable passed to my script. for some reason it is passing 'p' ...i have no idea where it is getting that from?

[dklynn]

toasti,

Remove the dot from your RewriteRule (otherwise, it should loop) and you should be okay:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ([a-zA-Z0-9])$ club.php?id=$1 [L]

Be SURE to put that in the clubs directory's .htaccess, not website root.

Regards,

DK

[goofyhumor]

I'm having problems with something like this, tried reading up, not sure what to do. Someone suggested I use mod_rewrite but what do I put in it?

This is how I explained my problem:

For example, I have a page at http://www.goofyhumor.com/ggcartoons2/index.php/1 but I can't seem to get it to work without the index.php in it like http://www.goofyhumor.com/ggcartoons2/1 - Get a HTTP 404

I have $var_array = explode("/",$PATH_INFO); in my PHP script then select the information from the database using $var_array[1].

How do I get it look like http://www.goofyhumor.com/ggcartoons2/1 - do I need extra code, files or need to change some server files?

As you may have a guessed, I'm not an expert PHP programmer

Thanks for any help you can give.

[toasti]

ok. tried that:

so now for a url:
www.38.co.za/clubs/olde65

with

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ([a-zA-Z0-9])$ club.php?id=$1 [L]

i still get $_GET='p'

with

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$ club.php?id=$1 [L]

i get $_GET['id'] = php

..and i should be getting $_GET['id']= olde65.

any ideas?

[dklynn]

toasti,

Actually, the code (in the clubs subdirectory) should be

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$ club.php?id=$1 [L]

to redirect www.38.co.za/clubs/olde65 to your script at www.38.co.za/clubs/club.php?id=olde65. The difference is the "^" which stipulates that the {REQUEST_URI} string must "start with..." and the "$" specifies that it must be the "end of string."

The other way (without the "^"), mod_rewrite should look for and skip the last non-conforming character (".") in the {REQUEST_URI} string (clubs.php) and return "php".

It's beginning to sound like you want mod_rewrite to change the links in your pages to give you the new format URLs -- it doesn't do that. What we're doing is allowing you to utilize "human-friendly" URLs and convert them within Apache for your scripts to use.

Goofy,

The same applies to you as you want to change the URL http://www.goofyhumor.com/ggcartoons2/1 to ??? If you want a webroot index.php file to serve the cartoon defined by cat=ggcartoons2 and id=1, then

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9]+)/([0-9]+)$ index.php?cat=$1&id=$2 [L]

will look for one or more lowercase and digits followed by a slash followed by one or more digits and redirect that to the index script with the query string attached. YOU must:

1. create the links in the new format AND
2. ensure that links within the script are preserved as ABSOLUTE OR use the HTML BASE tag to identify the actual location of the script.

Regards,

DK

[toasti]

Actually, the code (in the clubs subdirectory) should be


Code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$ club.php?id=$1 [L]

thanks dklynn. works like a bomb

[dklynn]

matt,

Sorry, it's too late to go into depth but you should look at replacing your (.*) "catch all" regex with something more specific ([a-z]+) as the "catch all" can capture slashes, dots, EVERYTHING. Normally, that leads to problems.

G'nite.

Regards,

DK