Question

must create a rule that captures the first preg_replace bar url:

http://localhost/item/other

must take the rule just ‘item’ regardless of what comes after

Answer 1

You should use the php parse_url() function

An example would be:

$parts = parse_url("http://localhost/item/other");
$path_parts= explode('/', $parts[path]);
$item = $path_parts[1];
echo $item;