PHP - URL with multiple parameters and same name causing unexpected behaviour - php

Question

I have a Rewrite Rule as
RewriteRule settings/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/?$ settings/?path=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
It basically takes path parameter and rewrite url like this
http://localhost/settings/?path=abc => http://localhost/settings/abc
But there's a problem! when I provide something like http://localhost/settings/abc/?path=xyz the path parameter is overwritten with xyz and it opens http://localhost/settings/abc/ with data of xyz
After further digging I noticed that the problem is caused by the parameters in URL itself. By default its picking up the value of last parameter with same name http://localhost/settings/account/?path=profile&path=account&path=profile
so the value that i can get in this case for $_REQUEST['path'] is profile. How can I just pickup the first value from the same parameters and ignore the rest of them?
One thing I can do is to remove [QSA] from the RewriteRule, that will do the fix but I need other parameters passed in url as well.
How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

PHP recognizes brackets [] appended to a parameter, e.g.
http://localhost/settings/account/?path[]=profile&path[]=account&path[]=profile
will be translated into an array
$path = $_GET['path'];
print_r($path);
shows
Array ( [0] => profile [1] => account [2] => profile )
This way, you can access any of the "paths" you like.
I could imagine some RewriteCond surgery, in order to remove part of a query string
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)&path=.*?&(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}?%1&%2
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^path=.*?&(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}?%1
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)&path=.*$
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}?%1
Depending on where the path is, this would remove it from the query string. And finally, the last rule would add the new path again
RewriteRule settings/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/?$ settings/?path=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
Although, I don't know, if this is working at all, and how (in)efficient this is.
There is one caveat, you must check for REDIRECT_STATUS to prevent an endless loop.

Answer 2

You can use these 2 rules in your .htaccess:
# remove path= parameter from query string, if it exists
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \?(.*&)?path=[^&]*(?:&(.*))?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^settings/. %{REQUEST_URI}?%1%2 [L,R=301,NE,NC]
# your existing rule
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \?(.*&)?path=[^&]*(?:&(\S*))? [NC]
RewriteRule ^settings/ %{REQUEST_URI}?%1%2 [L,R=302,NE,NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(?:^|&)path= [NC]
RewriteRule ^(settings)/(\w*)/?$ $1/?path=$2 [NC,L,QSA]