.htaccess multiple rules - php

Question

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# Use the following rule if you want to make the page like a directory
RewriteRule ^(v)$ /$1/
# The following rule does the rewrite.
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ profile.php?name=$1
# The following rewrite the other way round:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/profile.php
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST|HEAD|TRACE)\ /profile.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} name=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^profile.php$ %1?
I'm doing this code above in my .htaccess file, this works fine in my profile.php page because before, my profile.php is displaying this kind of URL:
http://mysite.com/profile.php?name=john
but when I wrote that code this is the result:
http://mysite.com/john/
I also wanted to apply this code to my category.php, so what I did was just to copy the code above and my whole .htaccess file looks like this one:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# Use the following rule if you want to make the page like a directory
RewriteRule ^(v)$ /$1/
# The following rule does the rewrite.
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ profile.php?name=$1
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ category.php?cid=$1
# The following rewrite the other way round:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/profile.php
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST|HEAD|TRACE)\ /profile.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} name=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^profile.php$ %1?
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/category.php
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST|HEAD|TRACE)\ /category.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} cid=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^category.php$ %1?
But this code gives me a weird result because when I visit
http://mysite.com/john/ the content that i'm seeing is the content of my category.php.
What should I do here? Any help would be greatly appreciated and rewarded!
Thanks!

Answer 1

i have got the problem in ur rule. the problem what i suppose is that your webserver is unable to differentiate the request is of category page / profile page whenever an request comes like
http://mysite.com/john/
so i suggest do one change in either profile page request or in category page request.
simply add http://mysite.com/profile/john/
hope this works out.

Answer 2

To answer the question as it was modified in the comments:
To differentiate between users and categories if these terms appear in the url, you only need one line per rule (untested example):
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^user/(\w+)/?$ /profile.php?name=$1 // using only a limited set of chars (letters and underscore) for the user name and an optional / at the end
RewriteRule ^category/(\w+)/?$ /category.php?cid=$1 // using only a limited set of chars for the category (letters and underscore) and an optional / at the end

Answer 3

Looks like I solved it using this one:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# Use the following rule if you want to make the page like a directory
RewriteRule ^user/(!(profile.php))$ user/$1/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^category/(!(category.php))$ category/$1/ [R=301,L]
# The following rule does the rewrite.
RewriteRule ^user/(.+)/$ profile.php?id=$1
RewriteRule ^category/(.+)/$ category.php?id=$1
# The following rewrite the other way round:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/profile.php
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST|HEAD|TRACE)\ /profile.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^profile.php$ user/%1?
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/category.php
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST|HEAD|TRACE)\ /category.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^category.php$ category/%1?