Question

Assuming a string like http://domain.com/aaaa/bbb/ccc/ddd

I want to use a .htaccess file to get the last element, in this case ddd.

I am using:

RewriteRule (.*)/$ ?pt=$1 [L]

But it only works with a trailing slash.

Answer 1

That’s because your regex includes a trailing slash.

Try:

RewriteRule ([^/]+)/?$ ?pt=$1 [L]

The question mark after the slash means “zero or one”. If you don’t want that behavior, change the regex accordingly.

Edit:

Because the rewrite directives will be re-run after a rewrite is done (at least in per-directory context), it is important to ensure that a rule will not be re-run after you have already achieved the desired rewrite. There are multiple ways to accomplish this goal, but one is:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !pt
RewriteRule ([^/]+)/?$ ?pt=$1 [L]

The point of the RewriteCond is to prevent the RewriteRule from being applied when there is already a query string with pt in it somewhere, which would be a clue that the rewrite has already happened. More complicated rules might require more or different RewriteCond directives.