Regex syntax for url redirection

Question

I'm using this wordpress plugin for redirection which offers regex https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

I've always been completely baffled with regex syntax so I tried this and it doesn't work

source:    ^/(.*)/blog/(.*)$
target;    ^/(.*)/(.*)$

for redirecting

http://example.com/anycategory/blog/anypage

to

http://example.com/anycategory/anypage

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-02 09:58:43Z

1

You don't give regex in regex. You need to use back-reference of capturing groups from source and have it like this:

source:    ^/?([^/]+)/blog/(.*)$
target;    /$1/$2

answered Sep 2, 2017 at 9:58

anubhava

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6 Comments

what is the purpose of this here /?

That makes leading slash optional.

@anubhava how to restrict (.*) to letters only ? thanks.

You can change (.*) to ([a-zA-Z]+) to restrict to letters only.

@anubhava tried: ^/?([^/]+)/blog/([a-zA-Z]+)$ weirdly doesn't work anymore

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