CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.htaccessurlhttp-redirect
user3546284
user3546284

Reputation:

htaccess redirect pretty URLs to ugly ones

So, I'm trying to make my URL's a bit more pretty and sharable. I have a website with some items that users can currently access with example.com/?i=itemName. However, I'd like users to be able to write example.com/itemName instead.

This means I'd have to do some redirection with htaccess. I want to redirect all URL's to example.com itself, but keep the URL the same. To clarify, an example:

User types example.com/niceItem. The server shows the content of example.com, but keeps the URL as example.com/niceItem (alternatively, it can change the URL to example.com/?i=niceItem, then I can simply read the URL with javascript and change it back to example.com/niceItem in the adress bar).

So far, this is the best I could do:

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

The idea is to capture the requests that don't have slashes after the first one (like example.com/niceItem), and then read the file at example.com/index.php?i=niceItem. The problem is, when I load a page like example.com/niceItem, the page displays what the value of i is with php; it should be niceItem, as the link is supposed to be example.com/?i=niceItem, but the value of i is actually the string index.php. Not quite what I wanted. Also, I'd expect the following to work

RewriteRule ^/([^\/]+)$ /?i=$1 [NC,L]

but this actually causes an internal server error.

So, the question is, why do those not work, and how would I be able to achieve what I'm trying to achieve?

PS. Actually, this website I'm talking about is a subdomain of example.com. So, I have sub.example.com which maps to example.com/sub/, and I need the URL's to be prettyfied like sub.example.com/itemName or example.com/sub/itemName. As I mentioned, the format of the URL isn't that big of a deal as long as the itemName part is in there. I'll be able to read the URL with javascript and change it to whatever I want once the page has loaded.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 39

Answers (1)

yolabingo
yolabingo

Reputation: 108

Use RewriteCond

If i is the only query argument that will be passed then

RewriteCond "%{QUERY_STRING}" "(\?i=)(.*)$"
RewriteRule "(.*)/?$" "$1/%2"

If you need to extract i only but keep other query args

RewriteCond "%{QUERY_STRING}" "(.*(?:^|&))i=([^&]*)&?(.*)&?$"
RewriteRule "(.*)/?$" "$1/%2?%1%3"

Most every framework provides this sort functionality. It is best not to reinvent the wheel when possible. This is a fragile setup, and it will probably cause you headaches in the future.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions