Question

i use .htaccess and i have a rule that allow me to dynamically look for product in my database.

so someone can click on a link like this one:

www.domain.com/product/modular-plastic-lunch-set.html

and see the product. Now my problem is, when i use

www.domain.com/product/Modular-Plastic-Lunch-Set.html

it does not work,

why?
here’s my rules:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^product/([a-z0-9\-]+).html$ products.php?name=$1 

Answer 1

It does not work because you don’t have either A-Z or the [NC] flag.

Use of the [NC] flag causes the RewriteRule to be matched in a
case-insensitive manner. That is, it doesn’t care whether letters
appear as upper-case or lower-case in the matched URI.

RewriteRule ^product/([a-z0-9\-]+).html$ php.php?name=$1 [NC,L,QSA]

or

RewriteRule ^product/([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+).html$ php.php?name=$1 [L,QSA]

I added the L:

The [L] flag causes mod_rewrite to stop processing the rule set. In
most contexts, this means that if the rule matches, no further rules
will be processed. This corresponds to the last command in Perl, or
the break command in C. Use this flag to indicate that the current
rule should be applied immediately without considering further rules.

and QSA flag:

When the replacement URI contains a query string, the default behavior
of RewriteRule is to discard the existing query string, and replace it
with the newly generated one. Using the [QSA] flag causes the query
strings to be combined.

More information about the flags at: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.3/rewrite/flags.html

TIP: if you are looking for products using the name, you might see delay in your query, speically if you don’t have an index. You should look into this before it gets ugly.