Clean URLs with more that one level

[zdislaw]

I've got mod_rewite working great, but there's one little kink that I'm having trouble figuring out.

Here's my nice URL:

http://domain.com/news/local/crime/

Here's my .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\/(.*)\/(.*)\/$     ?level1=$1&level2=$2&level3=$3

And it calls the page using:

http://domain.com?level1=news&level2=local&level3=crime

All hunky-dory, right. But what if I also want to kick out content higher up the "directory" structure? I've got a "news" homepage, a "local news" homepage, and a "local crime news" homepage.

http://domain.com?level1=news
[url]http://domain.com?level1=news[/url]$level2=local
[url]http://domain.com?level1=news[/url]$level2=local&level3=crime

With the Rewrite rule above, I get 404 errors with

http://domain.com/news/ or [url]http://domain.com/news/local/[/url]

Make sense?

[mrhappiness]

you don't neet to escape the slash

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)[/]{0,1}$ ?level1=$1
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)[/]{0,1}$ ?level1=$1&level2=$2
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)[/]{0,1}$ ?level1=$1&level2=$2&$level3=$3

should work

[/]{0,1}

means an optional closing slash so that domain.com/news will work as well es domain.com/news/

[zdislaw]

Thanks for the code mrhappiness. Unfortunately, I get a 500 error on it. If I take out the occurrances of {0,1} (see code below) then the error goes away, but only "/news/" works (and only with the trailing backslash, which I would expect), and "/news/local/" does not work.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)[/]$ ?level1=$1
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)[/]$ ?level1=$1&level2=$2
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)[/]$ ?level1=$1&level2=$2&$level3=$

On the page, if I echo out $REQUEST_URI and $QUERY_STRING I get:

/news/
level1=news

/news/local/
level1=&level2=local

Oddly, if I go out to the next level, the result is:

/news/local/crime/
level1=&level2=local&level3=crime

Any idea what's happening to "level1" in the second two results?

Thanks,
Tim

[zdislaw]

By altering the path, I was able to determine that level1 is not getting dropped. Beyone the first rule, $1 is getting the value of the page name instead. Any idea why. My forehead is getting sore from hitting it on my desk.

Here's what's going on:
http://rowandoane.com/newstest/

[Tekime]

At a glance... you may want to reverse your rules:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^{(.)/(.)/(.)[/]{0,1}$} ?level1=$1&level2=$2&$level3=$3
RewriteRule ^(.)/(.)[/]{0,1}$ ?level1=$1&level2=$2
RewriteRule ^(.)[/]{0,1}$ ?level1=$1

Most specific first