Simple all in one mod_rewrite for static prototyping - php

Question

I will provide a little background of my problem. I'm working on a static HTML5/CSS3 prototype for a PHP CMS. One of the things I want to is to have clean URLs. I had stuff like this at the start:
localhost:8888/file.php
And wanted it to:
localhost:8888/file or without the trail slash localhost:8888/file
I did a quick search on Stackoverflow and found several results over the matter and I kindly used this one to do the job:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*?)/?$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%1.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ $1.php
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ $1.php
The problem with this approach is when i want to set deep levels on my CMS structure, like site/posts. Without mod_rewrite I need to create folders and create intense changes over the code to make things work like ../images/ to ../../images/ and so on, so boo to that solution. I need to go with mod_rewrite to make it work.
In addition, that mod_rewrite chunk of code doesn't work either with the folder stuff so I started a search in here to find a solution so I can do /level1_level2_levelx.php to /level1/level2/level3/ or /level1/level2/level3. I did search in many ways but i don't find the correct answer to this.
Thank you all,
PD: I'm using MAMP.

Answer 1

On the Rewrite front I'm guessing the the following should do what you ask:
Internally rewrite entered URL:
http://localhost:8888/file
OR:
http://localhost:8888/file/
to:
http://localhost:8888/file.php
Rule:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.php$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} ^(.*)/?$
RewriteCond %1\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)/?$ $1.php [L]
But sound like you really want a custom 404 handler configured in Apache e.g.
<FilesMatch "\.(css|js|jpg|png|gif)$">
ErrorDocument 404 "File not found."
</FilesMatch>
<Files favicon.ico>
ErrorDocument 404 "-"
</Files>
ErrorDocument 404 /404-handler-script.php
And an associated 404-handler-script.php added to do whatever mapping you want internally e.g.
http://www.phpriot.com/articles/search-engine-urls/4
Note: This script redirects the browser to the destinations script rather than serve it itself.