Question

We all know that wordpress have simple .htaccess code like below
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

# only rewrite if the requested file doesn't exist
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s 

# pass the rest of the request into index.php to handle     
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

But if I redirect all requests to index.php, I think it becomes pretty cumbersome to handle every rewrite in php. Currently I have a logic in mind, like maintain a db table with all valid redirections. But still I don’t know how to handle rules likes ([0-9]+).

If anyone has implemented something like this before or has a logic in mind, can you please guide me in this matter

The sole purpose am doing this, is because I want flexibility in adding/deleting categories in the menu of my site. I don’t want to go to .htaccess every time and edit it at all places. I want to create more like a CMS where user can add delete categories

Answer 1

My suggestion would be to set up php based routing the basic idea is that you do something like this:

RewriteEngine On

# skip all files with extensions other than .html
# this way if you want you can append the .html to dynamic pages
# which wont really exist as a file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \..+$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.html$
RewriteRule .* - [L]

// redirect everything to your front controller
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

Notice how you just make everythign go to index.php but you dont rewrite any of the variables or anything. This is because you will work out what to based on the pattern of the URL with php. In order to do this youll need to implement a router. Basically a router takes a request and matches it against a pattern and then determines any parameters based on the pattern.

There are existing libraries out there to do this for you. For example Zend_Controller_Router.