Mod Rewrite Slash Problem - php

Question

I searched this problem in the site, but I couldn't find a solution.
I have a php page, call
http://www.domain.com/topic.php?name=xyz
I want to call this page with
http://www.domain.com/topic/xyz
What I tried is;
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^topic/([^/]*)$ /topic.php?name=$1 [L]
However because of this "/" I get 404 error. If I try "-" instead of "/" it works. I guess "/" forward user to folder "/topic" so I need a solution to fix it.

Answer 1

The following should work given the fact that your topic name follows the pattern ([a-zA-Z0-9-_]+) - and if it doesn't match it, it probably should(and it's your job to sanitize it so that it matches), because it's a URL.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^topic/([a-zA-Z0-9-_]+).html$ topic.php?name=$1 [L]
NOTE:
In your request you say you want the url to look like this: http://www.domain.com/topic/xyz and in the .htaccess rule you tried to write it with .html at the end. If you don't want .html at the end you should do the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^topic/([a-zA-Z0-9-_]+)$ topic.php?name=$1 [L]

Answer 2

I found my solution to problem. It is a bit late though :)
I edit my .htaccess such that
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .* redirect.php [L]
I create a redirect.php as you see. In this file, I explode slashes, then by using if statement I set
$path = explode("/", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
switch ($path[1])
{
case 'topic': $_GET[name]=$path[2]; include('topic.php'); break;
}
As you see setting $_GET as a code isn't handsome, but it works like a charm! :) Thanks all for your helps.

Answer 3

Too bored to guess anymore.
My .htaccess (taken from your question):
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^topic/([^/]*)$ /topic.php?name=$1 [L]
My topic.php:
<?php
var_dump($_GET);
Request:
http://localhost/topic/xyz
Result:
array(1) { ["name"]=> string(3) "xyz" }
So it just works on Apache 2.2.14

Answer 4

I think you need to espace the forward slash, like so:
RewriteRule ^topic\/([^\/]*)$ topic.php?name=$1 [L]
And in Bogdan's solution you're missing a + after the character class, now it only matches one character :P

Answer 5

If you have the line AddHandler type-map var in your httpd.conf, try commenting it out.
It might seem odd, but this functionality (which is not often used, but is enabled in the default httpd.conf for the Apache "It Worked!" page) has caused me grief along similar lines in the past.
It's something to do with the fact that you have a file "topic.php", and Apache allows you to call it like "topic/en-us". Or something like that. You'd have to look up the feature in the Apache docs to get the specifics; I'm just going off memory.