Using Mod Rewrite to rewrite a url? - php

Question

I have the following format:
http://www.mydomain.com/view/product/ID/CAT/TITLE
ID and CAT are both numeric. So, some real examples:
http://www.mydomain.com/view/product/1/2/ipod
http://www.mydomain.com/view/product/3/4/40-inch-tv
etc
I want to know if I should try to use mod rewrite, and how, or if I should rather fix the PHP to handle the paths correctly. I want to map the above to something like:
http://www.mydomain.com/CATEGORY/SUB_CATEGORY/TITLE
Any ideas?

Answer 1

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ /$1/ [R]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ index.php?cat=$1
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ /$1/$2/ [R]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ index.php?cat=$1&subcat=$2
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ /$1/$2/$3/ [R]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ index.php?cat=$1&subcat=$2&title=$3
in php you can get the variables as you would normally do, also you will need a rule for all variables entered and/or only category or sub-category or you will end up with a 404 when someone tries to access those pages

Answer 2

I would say that your question is not totally clear to me. Going by your examples what do you want your target URL to become from http://www.mydomain.com/view/product/1/2/ipod.
Will it be: http://www.mydomain.com/2/1/ipod ?
If yes then enable mod_rewrite and .htaccess through httpd.conf and then put this code in your .htaccess under DOCUMENT_ROOT directory:
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^view/product/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(.*)$ $2/$1/$3 [L,R,NC]