mod_rewriting with name from database - php

Question

I have a page with the the URL format:
www.site.com/events/event.php?id=1&cat_id=4
which I'd like to rewrite to something more SEO friendly, namely
www.site.com/events/name-of-event
(I don't need the category name in my URL, just for the page to create dynamic breadcrumb links).
I have the event name in my MySQL database, and I'd like to use that in the URL. I've tried to adapt the code in this answer but without success. Can anyone help?
EDIT:
RewriteRule ^events/([^/]+)$ event.php?event_name=$1 [L,QSA] this is what I initially tried (the cat_id isn't essential to the URL as the page checks and retrieves a default if none is passed).

Answer 1

For backward compatibility, you probably want to redirect events/event.php?id=123 to the new events/event_name url. The problem is that, as the person said in your linked answer, there is no real way to connect to the database via Apache, so you'll have to handle the redirection/translation in the file itself.
The rule itself must look something like this:
RewriteRule ^events/([^/]+)/?$ /events/event.php?event_name=$1 [L,QSA]
Then, in your event.php you'll do something like this:
#This is the top line of your file.
if( isset( $_GET['id'] ) ) {
$id = intval( $_GET['id'], 10 );
$event_name = do_database_query_NOAW( $id );
header( 'HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently' );
header( 'Location: /events/' . $event_name );
exit();
}
#code that now uses (the sanitized) event name instead of the sanitized id
if( !isset( $_GET['event_name'] ) || !preg_match( '/[A-Za-z0-9-]+/', $_GET['event_name'] ) ) {
header( 'HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request' );
exit();
}