Question

I’m wanting to make a URL look pleasing to the eye.

from 
    /index.php?a=grapes
to
    /grapes

Although, I’m having a few problems. I wanted a to have a wider variety of characters like a-z A-Z 0-9 / _ - . [ ].

from
    /index.php?a=Grapes.Are.Green/Red[W4t3r-M3l0n_B1G_Gr4p3]
to
    /Grapes.Are.Green/Red[W4t3r-M3l0n_B1G_Gr4p3]

In the index.php file I have

<?php
    $a = $_GET["a"];
    echo $a;
?>

just to test the URL is working correctly.

Right now what I have in .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9/_]+)?$ index.php?a=$1

only accepts a-z A-Z 0-9 / _.

• If I add - into the square brackets and have it as one of the
  characters which a equals I get the 404 error.
• If I add . into the square brackets I get index.php outputted.
• If I add [ or ] I get the 404 error.

If anyone has a solution I’d love to see it. Also, if anyone has time please could you explain each part of the RewriteRule saying what the part does. Thanks!

Answer 1

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?a=$1 [QSA]

The [QSA] thing at the end is what made it work 🙂 Thanks to jedwards for suggesting to use ^(.*)$ which accepts all characters.