Custom PHP/SQL CMS htaccess rules - php

Question

I have made a custom PHP/Sql cms with a dynamic post template called blog-post.php
I am pulling in the content like so:
http://www.example.com/news/blog-post.php?slug=sample-slug-from-database
This allows me to pull in any number of posts using the same template, pulling info from the database.
I have spent 4 hours trying to achieve the following with htaccess ..
Force a trailing slash instead of .php extension
Force blog post urls to show as:
http://www.example.com/sample-slug-from-database/
instead of
http://www.example.com/news/blog-post.php?slug=sample-slug-from-database
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Although your preferred method of URL is to redirect everything, e.g. /sample-slug-from-database/, I think it would be better to instead go with a less strict implementation, e.g. /news/sample-slug-from-database/
Either way, here's the first implementation:
# URL
# INPUT http://www.example.com/random-slug/
# OUTPUT http://www.example.com/news/blog-post.php?slug=random-slug
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)\/$ news/blog-post.php?slug=$1 [L,QSA]
And the second way:
# URL
# INPUT http://www.example.com/news/random-slug/
# OUTPUT http://www.example.com/news/blog-post.php?slug=random-slug
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^news\/(.*?)(\/(.*?)*)$ /news/blog-post.php?slug=$1 [L]

Answer 2

For anyone else struggling - this is my final code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1/ [R,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule . %{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ $1.php [L]
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)\/$ blog-post.php?slug=$1 [L,QSA]