Question

this is htaccess file on the server

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z0-9]+)\.domain.com(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/test\.php?user=%1&path=%2 [R]

According to my understanding of the above code if i request asher.domain.com/user it should rewrite to http://domain.com/test.php?user=asher&path=/user right?

Instead i get http://domain.com/test.php?user=asher&path= The %2 is empty. but if i use $1 instead of %2 i seem to get the right result.

I might be doing the silliest mistake ever but I am not sure where I my mistake is. Help me out here guys? where is the mistake in the rewrite rules that %2 is not working for me?

Answer 1

Using the $ syntax gives you RewriteRule backreferences, while the % will give you RewriteCond backreferences. The mod_rewrite documentation covers this.

In your case, your RewriteRule should look like:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/test\.php?user=%1&path=$1 [R]

Because you want the first group match from the previous RewriteCond and the first group match from the current RewriteRule.