Is there a way to change a php URL with htaccess? - php

Question

I am trying to change:
example.com/profile.php?id=abcdefgh
To simply:
example.com/abcdefgh
I searched here on StackOverflow and I understood that I need to do something with my .htaccess, I tried this code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)$ /profile.php?id=$1 [L]
But it seems nothing changes, when type this URL (example.com/profile.php?id=abcdefgh) it doesn't get rewritten.
P.S. I don't know if the above code is right, i tried it because where I got it from had a similar problem to mine.

Answer 1

This should work.
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ profile.php?id=$1 [QSA,L]

Answer 2

You should be requesting the "pretty" URL, ie. /abcdefgh. Your mod_rewrite directive in .htaccess then internally rewrites this to the "real" URL that actually handles the request (ie. /profile.php?id=$1). That directive is expecting a URL of the form /abcdefgh. However, in its current state I should expect a rewrite loop:
Request /abcdefgh
Request is rewritten to /profile.php?id=abcdefgh.
Processing starts over...
Request is rewritten to /profile.php?id=profile.php (because the regex ^([^/]*)$ matches the profile.php part of the rewritten URL.
GOTO #3
In this example you can avoid the rewrite loop by simply making the RewriteRule pattern (regex) more restrictive. eg. Include a dot (.) in the negated character class (assuming your new "pretty" URLs do not contain a dot).
For example:
RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)$ /profile.php?id=$1 [L]
You then need to actually change the URLs on your website to the new "pretty" URLs.
However, if you are currently getting a 404 then maybe this directive isn't being processed at all? Are .htaccess files enabled? Do you have other directives in your .htaccess file?
UPDATE: in the id the only characters allowed are A-Z
In that case you should be more specific with the regex and match just the characters required. This helps to avoid conflicts and avoids the need for filesystem checks (to some extent) - which are relatively "expensive". Note, however, that you've stated "A-Z" but your example includes lowercase letters. For the sake of argument I'll assume the id can include a-z and A-Z.
So, this now becomes:
RewriteRule ^([a-z]+)$ /profile.php?id=$1 [NC,L]
No other filesystem checks (preceding RewriteCond directives) are necessary. The NC (nocase) makes the regex match case-insensitive.
There is no need to check that the request does not map to a file (with a preceding condition), since the regex ^([a-z]+)$ could never match a file (that includes a file extension).
There is also no need to check that the request does not map to a directory, unless you are requesting directories in the document root directly - which is probably "unlikely". However, therein lies an inherent conflict with this URL structure. If you needed to be able to access a directory then those directory names become invalid IDs - so you would need other checks elsewhere in your system to ensure no IDs were generated that map to physical directories in the document root.