Question

I have a code like this:

  echo "  <td width='57%' height='126' class='bord' ><a href='$category_name-$id.htm'
  class='title_style'>" . $title . "</a><br />
   ";

So, $category_name is the name of categories from database. So it changes!

I need to rewrite it using RewriteRule. I’ve tried something like this

   Options +FollowSymlinks
   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)-([0-9]+)\.htm$  classified.php?id=$1 [L]

EX:
Let say $category_name = Cars and $id =15 then the url should look: Cars-15.htm

I thank you in advance

Answer 1

I suspect you only wanted to get the numeric part of the incoming path name.

Your regex is correct so far, but you used the wrong placeholder. $1 is for the first capture group, the category in your case. And $2 contains the second match groups content, the numeric id.

So your RewriteRule ought to be:

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)-([0-9]+)\.htm$  classified.php?id=$2 [L]

Which could be simplified further btw:

RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)-(\d+)\.htm$  classified.php?id=$2 [L]

(Though also matches underscores in the category part then.)