.htaccess mod rewrite help needed - php

Question

I have written this little piece of code. I am very new to this so i am not sure it is all correct. but basically it lets me access urls with the php extension. When people get on the site they are being redirected from the geo ip page to the correct language which like looks like this
main.php?lang=uk or nl or en or eu etc.
right now i can also use it like this
main/?lang=uk or nl or en or eu etc.
I would like to be able to to also remove the variable in the url ?lang=uk.
How would i do this. My .htaccess code is below
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
DirectorySlash On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R=301,L]
# remove trailing slash
RewriteRule ^(.*)\/(\?.*)?$ $1$2 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^([\w\/-]+)(\?.*)?$ $1.php$2 [L,T=application/x-httpd-php]
</IfModule>
Thanks too anyone willing to help.

Answer 1

The first argument of RewriteRule does match anything after the domain name and prefix* and before any query string if that exists. In http://localhost/this/is/my/test?lang=123 with a .htaccess file in the this/is/ directory it would match my/test. To match a query string, you have to use the %{QUERY_STRING} variable.
If the second argument (the rewritten url) of RewriteRule does not contain a query string, it will automatically append the query string of the original url to the new url.
In the code below I use %{THE_REQUEST}. This is the string that is used to make the request for a page. It is in the form of GET /my/resource?query=string HTTP/1.1. It does not change when rewriting things, which makes it useful to prevent infinite loops.
In your php file make sure that the language is read from a cookie instead of a get variable, then do the following:
#Set cookie for language
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*?)&?lang=([^&]+)&?(.*?)$
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}?%1&%3 [CO=lang:%2:127.0.0.1:1:/:0:1,R,L]
#Remove potential prefix or suffix & from query string
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^&(.*?)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*?)&$
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}?%1 [R,L]
#External requests with \.php should be without that.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.php$ $1 [R=301,L]
#Try to load php page if resource does not alreay have an extension
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.[a-z]+$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L]