I have a little php knowledge but am completely self-taught so I decided I want to start a side project as I enjoy challenging myself. I use WordPress daily so I thought I would try to make my own small blog for a learning project but not sure how to approach this URL issue.
I have articles in my database and pulling the article via the url what I am hoping to do is to use a friendly URL.
this is my URL http://localhost/news/index.php?article_slug=test-example
what I'm trying to achieve is http://localhost/news/test-example
I have been searching other posts on here like this one my .htaccess file looks like this.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^news/(\d+)$ /news/?article_slug=$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} article_slug=(\d+)
RewriteRule ^news$ /news/%1 [R,L]
When I go to the desired URL I get a 404 not found.
I'm am using xamp, not sure if this is relevant to my problem, but thought I would mention it.
Your current capturing pattern (\d+) matches only numerical strings ("d" for "digit").
You probably want to change it into something like (.+) instead. Or maybe ([\w\d-]+) ...
There are good explanations and valuable tools available to work into the field of "regular expressions". It is well worth investing into that, such expressions are used throughout computer science and the technology behind that is more or less independent from a specific programming language.
Related
I have recently been doing a lot of redesign on my website, and one of these changes is SEO URL's, and I am doing Mod_Rewrite to do this. The problem is that I am not exactly familiar with reg expressions at all, nor am I exactly the best in the world when it comes to working with the .htaccess file.. Now, the problem I am having is that I have several variables on the same level and the RewriteRules I am using are cancelling each other out. I did find a work around by adding is tag, name, and page into the rewritten url, but that is not what I want. I would like the urls to be structured so it is /$lg/articles/[$tag|$name|$page]/ Again,doing is the way I want causes them to conflict because the document doesn't seem to know to read and process off three at the same time. Any tips and suggestions on how to do this? I would greatly appreciate it. :D
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/tag/([^/]*)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&tag=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/name/([a-zA-Z]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&name=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/page/([0-9]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&page=$2
What I am wanting it so have the URL's structure like so : /language/articles/Variable Value. Say an integer is put in, I want the url to look like so: /en/articles/1 and it will then act as the page number for the pagination system. Or an article name is put in: /en/articles/random_article_name and that name is then used to all the specific article in a database. The same idea applies for the tags, but pulls all articles with that tag. The idea is to have the URLs short and clean. The problem is that if I do the code like so:
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([^/]*)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&tag=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([a-zA-Z]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&name=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles//([0-9]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&page=$2
Only one of the $_GET values will be read, and the rest will be ignored regardless of the variable name or regex expression. I am looking for a way to format my urls like so, if possible. If it isn't, I understand. I just figured it doesn't hurt to ask those who are more experienced.
You can have your rules like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([0-9]+)/?$ /articles.php?lg=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([a-zA-Z]+)/?$ /articles.php?lg=$1&name=$2 [L,QSA]
I'm not sure what's not working as your rules seem good to me. You can try this one to group the 3 rules :
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/(page|name|tag)/([0-9]+)$ articles.php?lg=$1&$2=$3
I'm working on a basic blog and trying to create a method to edit already-created entries. I know the code to render the entry in the edit view (admin page) works by manually passing the necessary GET variables in the url, e.g. "localhost/simple_blog/admin.php?page=blog&url=first-entry". This pulls all fields from the database without issue.
I have an .htaccess file performing rewrites, though:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /simple_blog/
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png|css|js|inc\.php)$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^admin/(\w+)(|/)$ admin.php?page=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^admin/(\w+)/([\w-]+) admin.php?page=$1&url=$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^(\w+)/?$ index.php?page=$1
RewriteRule ^(\w+)/([\w-]+) index.php?page=$1&url=$2
The link to edit an entry is in the format "/simple_blog/admin/blog/first-entry", and hovering over the hyperlink on the page shows the reference to "localhost/simple_blog/admin/blog/first-entry" which is correct. Clicking the link and viewing the source on the page that loads shows that no values are being received from the previous page, though.
I'm just hoping someone with a bit more mod_rewrite and RegEx experience can look at this with me and maybe point something out that I'm missing, either that or confirm that the issue is not with my rewrite rules and is definitely elsewhere. I've triple-checked my functions, I receive no errors in Apache, and the access log merely shows that "first-entry" is being accessed by GET.
If this question is a dupe, PLEASE feel free to let me know and point me in the right direction. If you feel like you need more info/code examples, let me know that, too. :)
(Yes, I'm using "PHP for Absolute Beginners" by Jason Lengstorf; I'm in chapter 7 right now.)
EDIT: 1 Aug 2013
I've tested my rules on http://htaccess.madewithlove.be/ and it appears that almost any url I test it on only matches the final rule, thereby only sending "index.php" back my way. I've checked my syntax both using the "PHP for Absolute Beginners" book and external resources. Everything seems to check out. Anyone have any idea why it's doing this?
Here's a screenshot of the Rewrite test results.
Even though you've declared a RewriteBase, you can't exclude it from the pattern matching side of the Rules. A lot of the online testers don't support things like RewriteBase. Try this and see if it works.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /simple_blog/
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png|css|js|inc\.php)$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^simple_blog/admin/([\w-]+)/?$ admin.php?page=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^simple_blog/admin/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+) admin.php?page=$1&url=$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^simple_blog/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+) index.php?page=$1&url=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^simple_blog/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?page=$1 [L]
Ok so i have a project that has product listing by categories,but also listing all products. I created a pagination for it,that works good. I set up mod_rewrite to work with paging on categories,but i cant manage to set it up for all products. The working one is www.domain.com/catalogue/catid/catname/pagenumber, and i also want to make www.domain.com/catalogue/pagenumber, but mod rewrite comes to problem here.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/?([^/]*)/?([^/]*)/?([^/]*)$ index.php?p=$1&cid=$2&cname=$3&page=$4 [L]
and when i try to call second link,he treats that page number as cid. So i want to set up mod rewrite to read what is needed,and ignore cid and cname in this case.
I'd like to give you an alternative for this one..
Instead of using regexes, which you seem to have a bit of a problem with still.. There's a much easier way.
If you redirect everything to index.php, no exceptions.
Then within index PHP, you can read the current url using $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], and it becomes very easy with explode('/', $url);' to do all this processing..
It's a much more natural way to do routing.
There is not an ultra reliable way to do this in mod_rewrite.
The most reliable method is check for this in PHP.
There are two main methods:
One as Evert mentions redirect all to the page in question and decipher the url from there, which is what most do
two, detect the amount of $_GET vars you receive and judge how the page should react to what it gets within the PHP.
What you ask is not very straight forward, nor very fast in regex so I would recommend slapping this clause onto PHP rather than trying to get regex to do it for you.
Why not use two rules, if you're sure you'll never get a link like catalogue/catid/pagenumber ?
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ index.php?p=$1&page=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ index.php?p=$1&cid=$2&cname=$3&page=$4 [L]
I wanna make this rather simple to ask so I can hope for a simple response. I'm somewhat new to mod rewriting (most I've done is a small cms using index.php?page=x and mod rewriting to that name). I have a shopping cart created by foreign people for my company before I started working here with little to no documentation and they are asking me to make the cart search engine friendly. I won't get too dirty with the details, just need to ask a question.
I have, say, results.php?name=friendly-url. I've edited my .htaccess so I can access these pages with a friendly url. It works perfectly.
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+).html$ results.php?name=1
Now the cart has it written to paginate kinda awkwardly only because the $_GET variable is stupidly named. I'm trying to find out, without having to get really dirty and having to re-name files or re-route directories in the code, to make a simple friendly pagination.
The end result I'm looking for is something like starter-kits-01.html and starter-kits-02.html and so on. This is the mod rewrite I've been trying just to get something to work.
RewriteRule ^[A-Za-z-0-9-]+).html?p=([0-9]+)$ results.php?name=$1&pageNum_rsCWResults=$2
That, I believed, should allow me to render starter-kits.html?p=2. I'm getting no mod rewrite error, but it's messing up my $_GET variables. I can't do, say, /starter-kits/2/ without getting dirty and having to go through this messy code the foreign people made and change 500 lines of directories.
I've spent about 30 minutes on it, and I have 3 other projects going on today, so I'm going to move onto those while I wait for somebody a little more experienced with mod rewriting to give me a helping hand.
Much appreciated.
Just use:
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+).html$ results.php?name=1 [QSA]
The QSA part tells it to forward any GET parameters on to the rewrite.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/rewrite/flags.html#flag_qsa
The page rewriting you need to do should be done in PHP itself and only require a few lines in mod rewrite. I really recommend you download a copy of Drupal or WordPress to see how they do it. But basically here is how it should work.
You create a URL structure like this:
product-search/cat-toys
product-search/cat-toys/page-1 (should point to the same place as the previous URL)
product-search/cat-toys/page-2 (could also use "product-search/cat-toys/page/2)
You take your site and have everything relay through a central index.php file, mod rewrite takes care of this. You just use the URLs on your site and the PHP will take the params passed and parse it into the URL structure that then takes you to the results.
Essentially the URL path is passed to index.php to one parameter by mod rewrite.
Sample mod rewrite entry (from Drupal, very similar to Wordpress):
# Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
Please check out these systems to get a better idea. WordPress is a much simpler, more straightforward system to go through.
I have an entire website built upon a link scheme of query strings (i.e. ?page=about or ?page=individual&i=johndoe). Of course, in retrospect we have decided to go with a different (beautified) scheme in order to be more SEO friendly (i.e. /about/ or /individual/johndoe/).
Is there a way to accomplish this change using mod_rewrite on an Apache .htaccess file without having to change all the links sitewide? For instance, if you click a link to ?page=about it would permanently redirect you to /about/.
The code I have tried will successfully display /about/ as ?page=about, however, there is no redirect involved. And to be honest, I've never done any work in mod_rewrite (and it's a bit intimidating), so I feel I'm going in the wrong direction. Nonetheless, here's the code I've been working with so far:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /$1/ [R]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /$1/$2/ [R]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1&i=$2
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1&id=$2
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1&bctid=$2
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1&bclid=$2
Any thoughts? I greatly appreciate any help.
First... The rewrite will only apply to rewriting requests. As a result your changes listed in your questions will now allow a page to be accessed in two ways:
/index.php?page=about
/about/
That means that unless you make changes throughout your site you will not really be making much of a change since everyone is pointing to the wrong URL.
I think instead you want to use mod_redirect, to redirect the user to the newer formed URL. I think you can then have that new url get mapped back to the version your site actually expects. I believe that this works, and doesn't cause a loop.
That being said i think there is some SEO ding since there is a redirect on all pages, and no one actually points to the nicer URLs directly. That might not give you the results you want. Another option would be to use those regex that you provide, and actually make the real code change in all your views. That might be easy or hard depending on how you are making your links.
Good luck.
Clarification
I read your questions as you want several different things:
you don't want to change anything huge in the way your site works but you want nice URLs (perhaps you are using a framework forces pages to be called like this). This means that you need to support both ugly and nice urls, which means you need mod_rewrite so that both versions work.
Your goal is to make better urls for search engines. That means that you should "encourage" users who use the ugly URLs to instead use the nice URLs. In that case you should probably clean up your old urls on your site. If not google will continue to crawl the ugly urls (since those will be the only ones it saw).
You can't clean up other peoples URLs so you should probably mod_redirect their links to ugly urls to your nice ones. That way google will find the nice urls nicely. (this is the part i'm not sure of. Will the mod_redirect and mod_rewrite cause a loop? I think not, but if it does then only #1 and #2 would be doable, and you'd just need to live with other people's sites pointing to your ugly urls
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /$1/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1
RewriteRule ^(artists)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /artists/$2/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(artists)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=individual&i=$2
RewriteRule ^(photos)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /photos/$2/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(photos)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=photogallery&person=$2
RewriteRule ^(post)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /post/$2/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(post)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=post&id=$2
RewriteRule ^(rss)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /rss/$2/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(rss)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=post&rss=$2
RewriteRule ^(search)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /search/$2/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(search)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=post&q=$2
RewriteRule ^(video)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /video/$2/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(video)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=videogallery&bctid=$2
RewriteRule ^(playlist)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ /playlist/$2/ [NC,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(playlist)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ /index.php?page=videogallery&bclid=$2
Here's what I ended up using. Not sure if all those flags are necessary... but it works using the previous code. I still need to change all links sitewide (front-end and back-end), but I should also put in redirects for all the old links incase I miss one or in case other websites link to the old pages.
I mean the best way how do this is:
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-z0-9-]+)/?([a-zA-Z0-9/-]+)?$ index.php?page=$1&par=$2
and in PHP:
$page = $_GET["page"];
$parm = split("/",$_GET["par"]);
// first par
$parm[0];