multiple htacces mod_rewrites in one file - php

Question

I have two rewrite rules for my application:
The first rule is a rule for /chef/index.php:
/chef/name -> /chef/?id=1234
The second rule is a rule for /recipes/index.php:
/r/name/nice-name-for-recipe ->
/recipes/?id=1234&nice_name=nice-name-for-recipe-name
The two rules work separately, but if I enabled both of them:
the first chef rule does not work,
the second recipes rule seems to work.
I tried to swap the order of the rules but I still cannot make both of them work.
Rules:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/chef/$ $1 [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /chef/index.php?id=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/r/$ $1/$2 [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /recipes/index.php?id=$1&nice_name=$2 [QSA]

Answer 1

In the first rule, you tried to match ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/chef/$.
/chef/$ means it matches a url that ends with /chef/,
because $ means the end of string, e.g.:
http://anything.dev/chef/
So it does not match /chef/name/, it matches /chef/.
Similarly, your second rule does not match /r/name/nice-name-for-recipe,
it matches /r/$.
These rules just tell apache to fallback to static files.
It is useful if you need to serve static files,
but they are unrelated to this question.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
So your rules are roughly just:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /chef/index.php?id=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /recipes/index.php?id=$1&nice_name=$2 [QSA]
Now it is clear that why these rules work separately but only the second one works if you put them together.
They both matches ^(.*)$, that is every url (except those urls for static files).
Thus when putting them together, only the second one wins.
So the real rule effect is:
/chef/name ->
/chef/index.php?id=/chef/name&nice_name=
/r/name/nice-name-for-recipe ->
/chef/index.php?id=/r/name/nice-name-for-recipe&nice_name=
P.S. I think the deep causes of this question are:
You try to write regular expressions without understanding them.
The regular expression syntax is hard to understand. Specifically, $ is both used as pattern and variable prefix.
The index.php code is dirty. It should not accept urls blindly. If index.php errors out, the two rules will not seem to work. Dirty code is hard for detecting and locating problems, and insecure (attackers can construct dangerous special urls).
Your IDE is not smart enough to warn you against RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /recipes/index.php?id=$1&nice_name=$2 [QSA] since $2 is unset.

Answer 2

You're writing that you want to transform dev.website.com/chef/name into dev.website.com/chef/?id=1234. This cannot work as the id in the target URL doesn't exist in the source URL, so you need to think about how you want to include the ID in the original URL as well.
Once you sorted that out, I'd recommend you to read up more on regular expressions to fix the mod_rewrite rules.
Here's a great resource for testing and explaining regular expressions: https://regex101.com/