I have a series of urls that look like this:
example.com/something/page
example.com/another
that I need to redirect to
example.com/folder/to/file?q=something/page
example.com/folder/to/file?q=another
I'm not so sure where to put the %{QUERY_STRING} (or if it's needed)? Thanks in advance!
After breaking the server numerous times, I have finally fixed this myself. I'm not sure if this is the best answer, but just a reference for anyone who might need it:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([_0-9a-z-]+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ folder/to/file?q=$1 [L]
RewriteCond directive)... put the regex in the RewriteRule pattern intsead. eg. Your 2 directives are the same as RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)$ folder/to/file?q=$1 [L]. The \w shorthand character class is the same as [_0-9a-zA-Z] so also negates the need for the NC flag. However, this is not a "redirect" as you've stated in the question, but an internal "rewrite". (A "redirect" generally implies an external HTTP redirect, which would be odd to implement here.)/something/page (your first example)?
/something/page. The existing rule can be easily adapted to handle both (see my answer). And as mentioned, the preceding RewriteCond directive is not required here.RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([_0-9a-z-]+)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ folder/to/file?q=$1 [L]
Following on from your answer and my earlier comments... there's no need for the preceding RewriteCond directive as the necessary regex can be performed in the RewriteRule directive itself, which is also more efficient. For example, the above is equivalent to the following:
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)$ folder/to/file?q=$1 [L]
The \w shorthand character class is the same as [_0-9a-zA-Z] which also negates the need for the NC (nocase) flag.
However, this rule does not handle URLs of the form /something/page (with two path segments) as in your first example. You don't need a separate rule for this if you simply want to copy the URL-path in it's entirely to the query string (as in your example).
For example, the following would suffice:
RewriteRule ^[\w-]+(/[\w-]+)?$ folder/to/file?q=$0 [L]
The above matches both /another and /something/page.
Note that the $0 backreference (as opposed to $1) contains the entire URL-path that is matched by the RewriteRule pattern.
file is a physical file with extension, like file.php?