CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.htaccessmod-rewriteurl-rewriting
luigi
luigi

Reputation: 11

Htaccess alias redirect fake multilanguage url

I have a domain www.domain.com with this kind of url

www.domain.com/my-italian-page.html (already rewritten by others htaccess rules)

I'd like to create a fake multilanguage url like

www.domain.com/my-english-page.html

The user will see in the address bar the rewritter url www.domain.com/my-english-page.html but the content that I'd like to show is the original www.domain.com/my-italian-page.html .

I'm on a shared server so I can't use apache vhost rule so I have to find a solution via htaccess.

Someone could help me to find the right way?

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 665

Answers (2)

dualed
dualed

Reputation: 10512

Generally you want to keep the code executed in the web server as small as possible, so having a rewrite rule for each page is not usually a good idea. I suggest to implement this the way most CMS work when SEO URLs are enabled:

  • Rewrite any url (mydomain/anytext.html [actually you should not use the .html extension either]) to a script (eg. mydomain.tld/translate.php)

  • Use content of $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] (should contain anytext.html) to display the correct page

  • Set correct HTTP response code if page does not exist: http_response_code(...) (see end of this answer for a function on php5 below 5.4: PHP: How to send HTTP response code?)

Sample .htaccess (actually originally "stolen" and severely modified from a typo3 setup)

RewriteEngine On

# Uncomment and modify line below if your script is not in web-root
#RewriteBase / 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule (.*) translate.php$1 [L]

Very basic pseudo-code-like (not tested, there may be syntax errors) example: 

<?php
// using a database? you have to escape the string
$db = setup_db();
$page = db->escape_string(basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO']));
$page = my_translate_query($page);

// no database? do something like this.
$trans = array( 'english' => 'italian', 'italian' => 'italian' );
$page = 'default-name-or-empty-string';
if(isset($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])) {
   if(isset($trans[basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])])) {
      $page = $trans[$trans[basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])]];
   }
   else {
      http_response_code(404);
      exit();
   }
}

// need to redirect to another script? use this (causes reload in browser)
header("Location: otherscript.php/$page");
// you could also include it (no reload), try something like this
$_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] = '/'.$page;
// you *may* have to modify other variables like $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']
// to point to the other script
include('otherscript.php');
?>

I saw in your answer that you have another script - dispatcher.php - which you seem reluctant to modify. I modified my response accordingly, but please keep in mind that by far the easiest way would be to just modify the existing script to handle any English paths itself.

Upvotes: 0

Jon Lin
Jon Lin

Reputation: 143936

So you want english URLs pointing to italian content? Hope your php script that generates these rewrite rules does the translating. But you'd do this for each one of your pages:

RewriteRule ^/?english-page.html$ /italian-page.html [L]

for each one of your pages.

Upvotes: 1

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