Question

If this is my actual URL to a file:

http://www.example.org/posts.php?post=example-post-name

In my .htaccess file, how can I use a regular expression to get to this path when a user submits:

http://www.example.org/posts/example-post-name

So far I’ve come up with this bringing together a few examples (this also included a www redirect):

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[^./]+)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule (.*) /$1.php [L]
RewriteRule ^posts/([A-Za-z])/$ /posts.php?post=$1

But I’m not having much luck with it, can anyone tell me where I’m going wrong?

Answer 1

You need a + after your A-Za-z group to indicate one or more characters, and also you need to add a - to the end of that group. At the end, the /? indicates that the final slash may or may not be present.

Finally, add [L] to be sure no further rewrite rules get processed.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

# First rewrite the posts:
RewriteRule ^posts/([A-Za-z-]+)/?$ /posts.php?post=$1 [L]

# ing0 edit: add in dirs that need changing back.
# (I dont know if there is an easier way to do this).
RewriteRule ^posts/css/(.*)$ /css/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^posts/img/(.*)$ /img/$1 [L]
# etc

# Then, if it's not a real file and doesn't already end in .php
# Note change here ...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.php$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# redirect it to PHP.
RewriteRule (.*) /$1.php [L]