Dynamic URL rewriting using .htaccess

Question

I'm having some trouble with rewriting dynamic URLs using .htaccess. The rewrite should be fairly simple, but I'm missing something and would greatly appreciate a hand.

The URL scheme:

http://www.example.com/index.php?p=/category/page-slug

should translate to:

http://www.example.com/category/page-slug

And

http://www.example.com/index.php?p=/category/&f=feed/rss

should become:

http://www.example.com/category/feed/rss

My current rewrite rule is:

RewriteRule ^(.+)?$ index.php?p=$1 [NC,L]

but that isn't working as it should. Any suggestions?

Edit: This rule is now partially working as it loads the page, but none of the page assets like my stylesheets and images are showing. I'm guessing it's because they are relative paths. Any ideas on a workaround?

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-/+]+)$ http://example.com/index.php?p=/$1 [L]

I'm not getting it. Do you want the above link to become the bottom link or do you want the bottom link to become the top link? — lolraccoon
– lolraccoon, Commented Dec 9, 2010 at 0:52
The clean URLs without the parameters are what I'm trying to achieve. — VirtuosiMedia
– VirtuosiMedia, Commented Dec 9, 2010 at 0:55
I think the question from lolraccoon is about which URL should show in the browser and which should be rewritten for the server. Usually we want the one without the parameters to be what the user types. Then when mod_rewrite runs it "should become" the version with the parameters. Is that what you mean? — bmb
– bmb, Commented Dec 9, 2010 at 2:37

bmb · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-09 02:33:54Z

1

Your page assets are not loading because the URLs for them are being rewritten also.

For instance, with a rule like

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?p=$1 [NC,L]

a request for

http://www.example.com/images/logo.gif

will be rewritten to

http://www.example.com/index.php?p=/images/logo.gif

A common way to avoid this is to prevent requests for real files from matching the rule. This is usually done by putting these two RewriteCond statements above your rule:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?p=$1 [NC,L]

The !-f means not a file and !-d means not a directory.

Then you'll need a different rule to match the URL with the f= in it. The answer from lolraccoon has a good suggestion, but I think he has it reversed from how you want it.

How will your rule know when the f= parameter is needed? If it's based on the presence of the word feed in the URL, then you could try something like this (but use the !-f and !-d condtions there too):

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*/)(feed.*)$ index.php?p=/$1&f=$2

edited Dec 9, 2010 at 2:33

answered Dec 9, 2010 at 2:20

bmb

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1 Comment

VirtuosiMedia Over a year ago

Thanks for the detailed explanation, bmb. I have everything working now except for the feeds. There are three possible values for the f parameter: feed, feed/rss, and feed/atom. Also, the wildcard characters don't seem to be working for the pages for some reason, but it works if I set explicit characters: ^([a-zA-Z0-9-/+]+)$ index.php?p=/$1 [L]

lolraccoon · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-09 01:02:21Z

0

Try the following:

RewriteRule ^index.php?p=(.*)&f=(.*)$ /$1$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^index.php?p=(.*)$ /$1 [NC,L]

answered Dec 9, 2010 at 1:02

lolraccoon

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VirtuosiMedia Over a year ago

Thanks for the help. I've tried a few variations of your code, but it's still not there yet. Any other ideas?

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