Question

I need to get a value from a url without the server displaying the page. For example, if someone goes to:

http://www.example.com/123456

I want to get “123456” and redirect to http://www.example.com.

http://www.example.com/123456 does not exist.

Is this possible with mod rewrite and PHP somehow?

Answer 1

For example in your .htaccess file (assumes LAMP with mod_rewrite):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]

And index.php:

<?php
    $url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
    // will output: /123456
    echo $url;
?>

This setup will redirect all requests which don’t point to an actual file or directory to index.php.