mod rewrite that takes in to account [ and ] within the URL

jasonc31

I am trying to rewrite my URL's, but hit a stumbling block.

The URL's are like so...

http://www.site.com/_One or two words [some other word or words] some more words/index.php

and using the following rewrite it alters the first bit ok but does not remove the /index.php part.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^{([/_])(.*)(/index.php)$} "http://www.site.com/?p=$2" [R=301,L,NC]

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([/_])(.*)$ "http://www.site.com/?p=$2" [R=301,L,NC]

What is the first rewrite do I change to correctly rewrite the URL so the /index.php is removed ?

cretaceous

I think you may be misunderstanding how it works .
Change your weblinks to names only - do not include "index.php" in the link
Then mod rewrite will split those into components divided by the slashes and redirect it to your designated index.php page

jasonc31

The problem with the site is that the original guy created these folders and if someone clicks on an old link then they will get taken to the home page and have to search again for the item.

jasonc31

and old link on Google that is..

cretaceous

You could sidestep mod_rewrite and do some string manipulation on the URL
$url_array = explode("/", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

OR if I understand a bit better now, mod _rewrite can split the incoming URL into the components and you just ignore the last one which is index.php

The guy must had a method to get the page from the address last time?
Or is everything literally matching directory names? If so .. eeek.. it must be fixable but you'll probably need conditional redirects.

jasonc31

The issue is not that the redirect does not work 'normally' but with what the previous guy done the redirect does not work. All due to them putting in special characters in the URL...

If I tested the url

http://www.site.com/One or two words some other word or words some more words/index.php
with this...
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([/])(.*)(/index.php)$ "http://www.site.com/?p=$2" [R=301,L,NC]

then all works..

but if the url was this...

http://www.site.com/_One or two words [some other word or words] some more words/index.php
then the redirect does not work because it has the [ and ] in it.
The url are what might be clicked on Google results.

cretaceous

Ok.. got you .. you need to escape the brace characters..
maybe as this:
RewriteRule ^([//[/]])
or more likely you will have to dig into mod rewrite a bit more -
There's a thread on S.O. that may be useful:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/459667/how-to-encode-special-characters-using-mod-rewrite-apache
sorry can't be any more help