GET parameter becomes the page name after rewrite - .htaccess

I have an url that looks like:
/platforms.php?platform_id=xxx
where xxx is a number
I'm rewriting the URL inside the php application. So, for example the above url would look like:
/xbox/ or /playstation/
Now in .htaccess I have:
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ platforms.php?platform_id=$1 [L,QSA]
However when I go to a platform page the GET url becomes /xbox/ or /playstation/ , instead of xxx.
Any pointers would be appreciated.
Update:
Hi, the link is not relevant to my question. I've tried to reformulate what I am after for in the example bellow with better details.
Thanks for the answer and sorry for the bad explanation.
Yep, when I said GET url I was referring to $_GET["platform_id"] .
Basically I have an URL called
www.example.com/platforms.php?platform_id=1
In the above example $_GET['platform_id'] = 1.
In the actual php aplication I have a function (let's call it make_link ), with which I make the above URL output like:
www.example.com/xbox/ (since 1 is the id of the xbox platform)
Now in httaccess I also need a rewrite rule that will make accessing the URL work.
So I have :
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ platforms.php?platform_id=$1 [L,QSA]
This does make the rewrite work in the terms that I can access
www.example.com/xbox/
However on the newly accessed page, if I get $_GET['platform_id'], the value for it is xbox/ .
Thanks,

In a RewriteRule, $1 is a variable backreferencing the first regular expression (in your case: ([^/]+)).
So, whatever text forms that part of your URL is what will be stored in $1.
If you wanted to use the consoles' IDs, you'd have to make these IDs part of your URLs. If you don't want that, but if you want your pretty URLs to reflect the names of the consoles, you'll have to rewrite the query part of platforms.php?platform_id=$1 in your .htaccess file.
Instead of querying for IDs (?platform_id=$1), you'll have to query for the consoles' names, e.g. ?platform_name=$1.
Edit:
In your PHP file, you'd then use $_GET['platform_name']

Related

.htaccess dynamic links rewrite engine

I need your help creating some links using mod_rewrite.
I have some pages like:
register.php
login.php
And have the code for them:
RewriteRule ^register/?$ register.php [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^login/?$ login.php [NC,L]
My problem is with "dynamic" links I have since I can't get them working.
For exemple I have links like:
index.php?id=news
índex.php?id=news&article=2
How can I transform those links into:
/news/
/news/article_name
And I have some products (that could have the same name in the same category) but with different ID's like:
índex.php?id=products&p=30
How can I change it to
/products/product-name
After this, is it possible to "generate" an unique name? Since I would like not set in the link the unique ID like products/45342/product-name?
What are the changes I need to make to my code to work with those links?
For example I have links like:
To clarify, you must first change the links in your application to be of the form /news/ or /news/article_name (but see below). You then rewrite these "pretty" URLs back to the underlying filesystem path.
So, to rewrite /news/ back to index.php?id=news you can do something like:
RewriteRule ^(news)/$ index.php?id=$1 [L]
Using the $1 backreference just saves typing. Only use the NC flag if this must be a case-sensitive match, but note that this potentially creates duplicate content, so you must specify the canonical URL in some other way (eg. rel="canonical" link element). For the same reason, only make the trailing slash optional if this is a specific requirement.
However, it's not possible to rewrite /news/article_name back to index.php?id=news&article=2 (I assume that should be i, and not í, as in your question?) since the article ID (ie. 2) is not present in the source URL. You need to include the ID in the source URL (or make the article_name unique and a key in your lookup). It would be more usual to create a URL like /news/2/article_name (which is what StackOverflow does), which can be easily rewritten. The article_name in the URL is purely for users (and indirect SEO). In which case you could rewrite this like so:
RewriteRule ^(news)/(\d+)/ index.php?id=$1&article=$2 [L]
This will rewrite /news/N/<anything> to /index.php?id=news&article=N (where N is 1 or more digits).
However, since it rewrites <anything> you should also implement a redirect in your application when the non-canonical article_name is accessed. (Which again, is what StackOverflow does.)
And I have some products (that could have the same name in the same category) but with different ID's like: índex.php?id=products&p=30
How can I change it to /products/product-name
The same principle as mentioned above applies here also.
After this, is possible to "generate" an unique name?
You can generate this "unique name" in your application, not .htaccess. Build you URLs in your application etc.
Since I would like not set in the link the unique ID like "products/45342/product-name" ?
As mentioned above, either your product-name is unique, and behaves like your id. Or you incorporate the unique ID in the URL - this is the far more common approach, offers greatest flexibility and is less prone to error. A "short" URL like /products/45342 will redirect you to the correct canonical URL.

.htaccess rewrite url that has already been changed

I am upgrading my site which involves new scripts and a different URL
structure. There are currently a few thousand pages so I want to
basically move them in to a subdirectory so that they are not lost.
I am not very confident with htaccess so can someone please confirm that
the first part I have done is correct:
Old URL: http://www.example.com/article/another-dir/page-group/whatever.html
RewriteRule ^article/?$ http://www.example.com/archive/ [R=301,NC,L]
To achieve this: http://www.example.com/archive/another-dir/page-group/whatever.html
Search engines will see the above as a permanent move and in the address bar
it will show the new url. Is this right?
The second part is on the new script - the url's could be improved but I am
unable to change all the script so thought about using htaccess again but am
not sure if it can be achieved like this.
At the moment the url looks like this:
url: http://www.example.com/category/4/categoryname
In the htaccess the current rewrite rule for this type of url looks like this:
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/(.*)$ category.php?id=$1&slug=$2
Is it possible to change this so that in the url address bar I end up
with this:
http://www.example.com/categoryname
Basically I don't want to see either the number or category/ in the resulting
url as it will be easier for visitors to use - is that possible??
Thanks in advance for any help.
The second question related to passing in URI components for querystring redirect and then hiding those components in the URL I don't think would be easy, if even possible, using RewriteRules.
For the first question though. Given the sample URLs you mentioned, the RewriteRule would need to include capture and backreference if you want to preserve the full URL in the redirection. For example:
RewriteRule ^article/?(.*)$ http://www.example.com/archive/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

Trying to make a GET variable invisible in an URL but retain its usefulness using mod_write

Good day all,
I am trying to master the ,magic of mod_rewrite and require some advice/help.
I am trying to turn an URL from:
http://www.domainname.com/preview/about/5
To this:
http://www.domainname.com/preview/about
The issue is, I still need to retain the [id] part of the original URL to be used as a GET later on and it not be visible.
The code I have thus far:
RewriteRule ^preview\/([^/]+)\/([^/]+)\/$ /preview\/$1?id=$2 [R=301,QSA]
RewriteRule ^preview\/([^/]+)\/$ ?mode=preview&id=$2 [L,QSA]
This manages to create an URL like: http://www.domainname.com/preview/about/?id=5 and passes the ID through, I just need the ?id=5 to be invisible in the URL.
Thank you in advance anyone who has a solution for this, much appreciated.
UPDATE:
I have managed to get the following code to work as expected alas this is using static values for ID all I now need for this to be complete is to get it working off dynamic values for ID.
RewriteRule ^preview\/([^/]+)\/([^/]+)\/$ /preview\/$1 [R=301,QSA]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*id=5.*$
RewriteRule ^preview\/([^/]+)\/$ ?mode=preview&id=5 [L,QSA]
You cannot get 'invisible' get parameters. The closest you'll get is setting a cookie to pass this data onwards.
RewriteRule ^preview/([^/]+)/([^/]+)[/]?$ preview/$1/ [CO=id:$2:127.0.0.1:1:/preview/$1:0:1,R]
In php you can access this cookie with $_COOKIE['id'] and the id is invisible in the url (because it isn't actually there). Documentation about the CO flag can be found here.
Edit: If you want to do it all with mod_rewrite, you can access this cookie from mod_rewrite too. As this is an internal rewrite, you can probably just use a direct path to the actual file you want to call.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} id=([^;]*)
RewriteRule ^preview/([^/]+)[/]?$ preview/$1?id=%1 [CO=id:-:127.0.0.1:-1:/preview/$1:0:1,END]
Edit2: I've added in a reset for the id-cookie in the second rule (expiry time T-1 minutes). This will cause the correct page to load if the user decides to go to preview/about/ again within 1 minute from going to preview/about/5 (which redirects to preview/about/ with a hidden id set to '5' to load something different).
If you are not passing the "ID" as part of the query string (e.g. ?id=5) or part of the URI (e.g. /preview/about/5) then you need to pass it in the request body, in something like a POST request. Otherwise, you can't make it "invisible", because the webserver isn't going to see it. If the webserver doesn't see it as a request, there is nothing mod_rewrite can possibly do to extract it.
Assuming you can't setup your site so that requests get POSTed (sort of like how a form is submitted) everytime someone clicks on a link, you're best bet is probably having it look like the http://www.domainname.com/preview/about/5 form, or maybe http://www.domainname.com/preview/about-5?

RewriteRule in my .htaccess file

I have a problem with query strings. I want to change this...
http://www.audiomasterclass.com/arc.cfm?a=giant-killing-%245-mic-preamp-its-secrets-reveale
To this...
www.audiomasterclass.com/?a=588
Based on this url it can't be done. You need logic to reverse the name to a ID.
What you can do is make sure that in the original url the ID is included. For instance:
http://www.audiomasterclass.com/arc.cfm?a=giant-killing-%245-mic-preamp-its-secrets-reveale
can be changed to: http://www.audiomasterclass.com/588/giant-killing-%245-mic-preamp-its-secrets-reveale
And then use a rewrite rule:
RewriteRule ^/([0-9]+) /arc.cfm?a=$1 [L]
What you do is add the id to every link so you system will on basis of ID but google/users see the nice URL.
You need to change the rewrite rule a bit (for your needs and server config) but it will explain the basics.

.htaccess ModREwrite

This is a totally new area for me so please be patient. I want to create "permalinks" for a dynamic site I am working on. At the moment all the pages (not the index) are referenced using an ID variable thus:
http://www.domainname.com/page.php?ID=122 (etc)
I want to create a suitable rewrite rule so that a useable URL would be more like this:
http://www.domainname.com/page/'pagetitle'.html (could be .php doen't matter)
Page title is stored in the database and obviously is linked directly to the ID
Am I right in thinking thr rewrite rule would be something like this?
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(([^&]*&)*)ID=([^&]+)(&+(.*))?$
RewriteRule ^page\.php$ /page/%3?%1%5 [L,R=301]
My ideal would be to just create
http://www.domainname.com/'pagetitle'.html
But have absolutly no idea how to do that.
Now the other question/sub question.
If the rewrite works i.e. you type in http://www.domainname.com/page/'pagetitle'.html to a browser address bar does the htaccess file work "the other way" in accessing the page http://www.domainname.com/page.php?ID=122 or do I have to create a function to take the 'pagetitle'.html bit of the URL and convert it to page.php?ID=122 ?
Also, sorry, but this is all new; if I create a site map (xml or php etc) using http://www.domainname.com/page/'pagetitle'.html will the SE spiders go to http://www.domainname.com/page.php?ID=122? or di I need to create the sitemap using the ID variables?
Question 1 and 2:
The condition is not required in this case. Use it like this:
RewriteRule ^/page/([\w-]+).html$ /page.php?title=$1 [L,R=301]
This transforms
/page/blabla.html to /page.php?title=blabla
You need to find the right page using the title parameter in page.php
Question 3:
I suggest you never use the querystring variant of the urls in any of your anchor links or xml sitemap. This way the spiders will only know of the friendly urls.

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