Question

I finally got my permalinks working for Custom Post Types and Taxonomies using `a helper class.

My custom post type is “menu” and my taxonomy is “menutype”.

I wrote the following rewrite:

function custom_rewrite( $wp_rewrite ) {
    $feed_rules = array(
        'menu/salads/(.+)'    =>  'index.php?menu=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1),
        'menu/hotboxes/(.+)'    =>  'index.php?menu=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1),
        'menu/wraps/(.+)'    =>  'index.php?menu=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1),
        'menu/sauces/(.+)'    =>  'index.php?menu=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1),
        'menu/soups/(.+)'    =>  'index.php?menu=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1),
        '(.+)/([^/]+)(/[0-9]+)?/?$'    =>  'index.php?menutype=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(2)
    );

        $wp_rewrite->rules = $feed_rules + $wp_rewrite->rules;
    }
    // refresh/flush permalinks in the dashboard if this is changed in any way
    add_filter( 'generate_rewrite_rules', 'custom_rewrite' ); 

The only thing is I would like to not hardcode the taxonomy (i.e menu/sauces/, menu/hotboxes) into my rewrite rules as the terms might change (but they will always be lowercase letters)

I tried the following:

'menu/([^/]+)/(.+)'

And also:

'menu/([a-z]+)/(.+)'

But neither worked.

Answer 1

If you don’t need the reference to what follows menu/, then remove the parens there, e.g.

menu/[^/]+/(.+)

If you do need the reference, then make sure you’re passing the correct int argument to preg_index.

As to “why does removing the parens work”, because including the parens around the first group [^/]+ creates a back-reference to what’s matched there. So when you call preg_index(1) you’re asking for the first match, when what you want is actually the 2nd match .+. You could also pass 2 to preg_index indicating that you want the 2nd matched group…but if you don’t need the first match it’s just wasted overhead to create the reference in the first place.