Htaccess redirecting wrong page - php

Question

here is my htaccess code
# Enable rewrite engine
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ view-product.php?catSeoUrl=$1&subCatSeoUrl=$1&productSeoUrl=$3 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ products.php?catSeoUrl=$1&subCatSeoUrl=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ products.php?catSeoUrl=$1 [QSA,L]
the second & third rules are working fine. Please have a look here
http://domain.tdl/consumer-electronics/mobiles.php
http://domain.tdl/consumer-electronics.php
but the First Rule for view Product also redirecting to products.php, have a look.
http://domain.tdl/consumer-electronics/mobiles/product-6.php
its strange, can you please help me to resolve this?

Answer 1

As soon as the third rule is applied then automatically the third rule gets applied too, since its pattern matches the target of the first rule.
With the apache http server from version 2.4 onwards you can use the END flag instead of the L flag to prevent that:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ view-product.php?catSeoUrl=$1&subCatSeoUrl=$1&productSeoUrl=$3 [END]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ products.php?catSeoUrl=$1&subCatSeoUrl=$1 [END]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ products.php?catSeoUrl=$1 [END]
For older apache versions you need to add rewrite conditions:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ view-product.php?catSeoUrl=$1&subCatSeoUrl=$1&productSeoUrl=$3 [END]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ products.php?catSeoUrl=$1&subCatSeoUrl=$1 [END]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^([^\]+)\.php$
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.php$ products.php?catSeoUrl=$1 [END]
And a general hint: you should always prefer to place such rules inside the http servers (virtual) host configuration instead of using dynamic configuration files (.htaccess style files). Those files are notoriously error prone, hard to debug and they really slow down the server. They are only supported as a last option for situations where you do not have control over the host configuration (read: really cheap hosting service providers) or if you have an application that relies on writing its own rewrite rules (which is an obvious security nightmare).