Question

I have a search form on my site

<form class="clearfix" action="search.php" method="get">
                <h1>Search the Site</h1>
                <input class="field" type="text" name="q" id="query" value="" size="23" />
                <input type="submit" value="Search" class="bt_login" />
</form>

right now it posts to search.php, but I want it to post to /search/query-here. My .htaccess file looks like this right now

ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?p=404

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On 

RewriteRule ^(products|blog|feed|search|checkout|checkout)$ $1.php [nc]
RewriteRule products/cat/(.*)$ products.php?type=cat&cat=$1 [nc]
RewriteRule products/(.*)$ products.php?type=single&product=$1 [nc]
RewriteRule blog/(.*) blog.php&post=$1 [nc]
RewriteRule feed/(.*) feed.phptype=$1 [nc]

RewriteRule search\.php?q=(.*)$ /search/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule search/(.*)$ search.php?q=$1 [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$  
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?wghandcrafted.com/.*$ [NC]  
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|psd|js|swf|flv|png)$ /feed/ [R=302]  

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f  
RewriteRule ^images/.*\.jpg$ /images/default.jpg [L]

How can I accomplish this?

Answer 1

I think that the way to do this, could be to

1. Detect the form has been submitted
2. Use the header() function to redirect the user to the correct URL.
3. Let the .htaccess file rewrite the URL in the background
4. Process the form if the correct variable name is given

This would likely be seamless and the user wouldn’t know it had happened.

So…

Revised form with method=”POST” and name=”search_form”

<form class="clearfix" action="search.php" method="POST" name="search_form">
                <h1>Search the Site</h1>
                <input class="field" type="text" name="q" id="query" value="" size="23" />
                <input type="submit" value="Search" class="bt_login" />
</form>

.htaccess
Get URL in the form of http://website.com/search/search+term and rewrite to http://website.com/search.php?q=search+term in the background

RewriteRule ^search/(.*)$ /search.php?q=$1 [R=301,L]

PHP

if ($_POST['search_form'])
{

    // Get the search query
    $search_query = $_POST['q'];

    header("Location: search/" . urlencode($search_query));
    exit();
}
else if ($_GET['q'])
{
    $query_from_url = $_GET['q'];

    echo "The query from the URL is" . $query_from_url;
}