mod_rewrite

ashley98860615

Wasnt sure where to post this question so thought this would do..

I am trying to use mod_rewrite on my server. So far i have managed to get the browser to understand that a the link www.host.com/pages.php?page=forum can be entered as www.host.com/forum - that bit works but for the links i have made in my site already; when clicked address in the browser address bar doesn't change. It remains as page=whatever. I think redirection is the answer but i can't figure it out. Here's what i have:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*) pages.php?page=$1
</IfModule>

thanks

bradgrafelman

ashley98860615 wrote:
Wasnt sure where to post this question so thought this would do..

Me neither, but since it's vaguely related to PHP in general... the General Help forum sounded good to me 😉

jazz_snob

I don't claim to be an expert, but I use mod_rewrite frequently. Instead of REQUEST_SCRIPT I use REQUEST_FILENAME. Your set up should work fine. I've noticed that when deployed I sometimes have to edit the .htaccess file because mod_rewrite is working differently on the production server than it was on my development server. Also, dump your browser's cache after you make changes.

Kudose

Personally, I fake mod_rewrite.

I write my URLs to look like mod_rewrite is in use, but I grab the whole URL, and parse the values manually. I find it works very nicely across multiple servers.

i.e.

index.php/autos/cars/chevy/cobalt

/* get page information from URL */
    $PAGE = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
    /* put URL and vars into slicable chunk -> index:/var1/var2/var3/etc */
    $PAGE = preg_replace("#[/]?.*[/](.*)\.php(.*)#", "\\1:\\2", $PAGE);
    /* explode into array -> [0] = page [1] = /var1/var2/var3/etc */
    $pagevars = explode(":", $PAGE);
    /* set $page to actual page (i.e. index.php) */
    $PAGE = strtolower($pagevars[0]);
    /* explode to get page vars (zero is empty) -> [1] = var1 [2] = var2 etc */
    $pagevars = explode("\x2F", $pagevars[1]);

unset($pagevars[0]); unset($pagevars[1]);
/*set URL var pointer to /var1/var2/var3/etc */
$PAGEVARS = $pagevars;

echo $PAGEVARS[0].' '.$PAGEVARS[1].' etc...';

// the page vars would hold -> autos : cars : chevy : cobalt -> respectively

It may look sloppy (I have been using this since the beginning of time) but it works a treat.

🙂

ashley98860615

kudose i don't understand how your function works?

my function works but doesn't rewrite the address bar

bradgrafelman

So you want the newly redirected URL to appear in the actual requested UIR? What you want is a forced "external" redirection then. To do this, add the "R" flag (aka "redirect") to your RewriteRule, like so:

RewriteRule ^(.*) pages.php?page=$1 [R]

ashley98860615

adding the [R] doesn't seem to do anything plus when i acess the shorter url (e.g http://localhost/forum instead of http://localhost/pages.php?page=forum) the url changes to:

http://localhost/c:/document and settings/.../pages.php?page=forum

and thius forbidden

bradgrafelman

Hm... try this?

RewriteRule ^(.*) http://yoursite.com/pages.php?page=$1 [R]

ashley98860615

this does the opposite and redirects me to: pages.php?page=whatever

bradgrafelman

Woops.. sorry.. must not have been thinking. Try this:

RewriteRule pages.php?page=(.*) http://yoursite.com/$1 [R]

TheDefender

This article about how to use ForceType to rewrite friendly URLS is extremely handy... There's one little mod you have to make on the .htaccess file, but it works great in both Win32 and *Nix environments. (I think this is the portion that kudose failed to mention earlier in his post)

*Note - this would require you to recode some of your links, but in the end, it's all worth it.