I need to create a series of redirects for personalized urls. They need to go from a directory on my server to a more complex url on another which includes a query string based on the original url. Here is an example:
I would like to rewrite from this:
http://www.mywebsite.com/TestDirectory/John.Doe
to this:
http://their.server.com/adifferentdirectoryname/page.aspx?u=John.Doe&s=lorem&dm=purl
There will be hundreds of these personalized urls I will send out, so I need the solution to account for that so that I don't have to write this for hundreds of names.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Much Thanks!
I think you want something like this:
RewriteRule ^TestDirectory/(\w+\.\w+)$ foo.aspx?u=$1 [R]
The regex \w+\.\w+ matches a word, a dot, and another word. The $1 is replaced with the captured string from the regex. The [R] means to actually redirect the user.
These rules are tough to get just right so I recommend reading through some examples.
Related
I have a client that has several files whose name is (for example) car.php, car_edit.php, car_review.php. These each come with query strings - so car.php?id=1234 or car_review.php?id=321. They would like the file names to be truck*.php rather than car*.php.
I'm hoping there's a way using htaccess to convert the url string to be truck*.php and use the current car*.php files. Also if possible I'd like to forward any page asking for car*.php to truck*.php.
I've done quite a bit of searching and haven't found an answer to doing this particular thing. Does anyone know how I might do this? Thanks.
You need rewrite rules. Try something like:
RewriteRule ^truck(.*).php$ /car.php?id=$1 [NC,L]
Note: This is untested, so may require tweaking.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^truck(.*)\.php$ /car$1.php [NC]
ought to do it. It should automatically transfer any URL query string like id=xxx over to the car*.php rewritten URL.
i'm trying to understand some rules or rewrite engine but i can't figure how to do it.
i have this link:
w**.example.com/index.php?city=new+york
and i wish to rewrite to this new:
w**.example.com/good-parties-in-new-york
the value of city can change to any other city.
but the point here is I only what to rewrite if all the key is:
index.php?city=
because the
index.php?zone=
is used for other things, etc...
any suggestion? thanks.
I'm a little confused on what exactly you want to achieve. URL rewriting is normally done to make URLs look nicer, not the other way around.
You would typically want to have a nice URL like this (which you'd communicate to your users):
w**.example.com/good-parties-in-new-york
act as an "alias" for a not-so-nice looking URL like this (= the actual page being served, unbeknownst to the users):
w**.example.com/index.php?city=new+york
With Rewrite, you can backreference regular expressions. In this case, you could convert parts of the "nice" URL into RegEx's which you would then backreference with variables in the query string of the page working in the background.
E.g.:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^good-parties-in-([a-z]+)-([a-z]+)$ index.php?city=$1+$2 [NC,L]
The first RegEx (([a-z]+)) is referenced as $1, the second as $2 (and so on).
Note that this example will only work for city names consisting of two words, like New York, San Francisco etc. You'll have to figure out of how many words city names can consist of and rewrite your code accordingly. (You might also have to set different flags.)
Plus, you should make sure that your php script checks against existing city names and throws an appropriate error/gives out a warning if users enter fantasy names like good-parties-in-magical-rainbow-city or similar.
If this isn't what you're looking for, maybe you could clarify your question?
firstly I know and understand how to redirect based on parameters :)
My issue is that I need to redirect all links based on the supplied MenuID parameter and ignore any other information in the query string, as not all parameters are used in each web page request, e.g. menuid=2738421; is New Products
http://www.domain.com/shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&menutitle=New+Products& limit=5&page=24
or,
http://www.domain.com/shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&menutitle=New+Products&limit=20&page=3
or,
http://www.domain.com/shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&page=12&limit=15
to
http://www.domain.com/new.html?page=x&limit=x
The reason for the redirection is that search-engines have indexed these pages and so I need to prettify the URLs.
Is this actually possible to create a fuzzy redirect criteria?
## 301 Redirects
# 301 Redirect 1 - works for this explicit URL, but need a partial result
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteRule ^new\.html$ http://www.monarchycatering.com/shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&menutitle=New+Products&limit=5&page=24 [R=301,NE,NC,L]
Any help gratefully taken, thank you in advance
Mark.
Sorry for the delay, but StackOverflow doesn't seem to have a way to flag answers that have been replied to and need my attention.
OK, if I understand you correctly, you have an incoming "reduced" semi-SEF URL out in the real world (produced by your links), such as
http://www.domain.com/new.html&limit=5&page=24
("real" SEF would be something like http://www.domain.com/new/limit/5/page/24.html)
and you need to use .htaccess to map it to real files and more Query String information:
http://www.domain.com/shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&menutitle=New+Products&limit=5&page=24
You want to detect new.html for example, and replace it by a fixed string shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&menutitle=New+Products&, using the [QSA] flag to append the existing Query String on to the end?
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^new\.html /shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&menutitle=New+Products [QSA]
RewriteRule ^sale\.html /shop.php?menuid=32424&menuref=Ja&menutitle=Products+On+Sale [QSA]
...etc...
I believe that a & will be stuck on the end of the rewritten address if the user supplied a non-empty Query String, but be sure to test it both ways.
P.S. It probably would have been cleaner to use "comment" to reply to my question, rather than adding another answer.
It's not clear to me what your starting point is and where you're trying to end up. Do you have "pretty" URLs that you want to convert into "non-pretty" Query Strings that your scripts can actually digest?
The reason for the redirection is that search-engines have indexed
these pages and so I need to prettify the URLs.
If the search engines have already indexed the Query String non-pretty version, they'll have to now re-index with pretty URLs. Ditto for all your customers' bookmarks.
If you want to generate "pretty" links within your site, and decode them (in .htaccess) upon re-entry to non-pretty Query Strings, that should work. Your customers' existing bookmarks should even continue to work, while the search engines will replace the non-pretty with the pretty URLs.
and thanks for the interest in my question...
I have rewritten parts of my website and Google still has references to the old MenuID parameter and shop.php configuration, but now I rewriten the Query to a prettier format, e.g.
http://www.domain.com/shop.php?menuid=2738421&menuref=Ja&menutitle=New+Products&limit=5&page=24
is now
http://www.domain.com/new.html&limit=5&page=24
The pages represent product categories, and so needed to be displayed in a more meaningful manner. Customer bookmarking is not an issue, as long as I can redirect the pages.
I hope that makes sense, best wishes,
Mark.
I am trying to figure out how to use the ampersand symbol in an url.
Having seen it here: http://www.indeed.co.uk/B&Q-jobs I wish to do something similar.
Not exactly sure what the server is going to call when the url is accessed.
Is there a way to grab a request like this with .htaccess and rewrite to a specific file?
Thanks for you help!
Ampersands are commonly used in a query string. Query strings are one or more variables at the end of the URL that the page uses to render content, track information, etc. Query strings typically look something like this:
http://www.website.com/index.php?variable=1&variable=2
Notice how the first special character in the URL after the file extension is a ?. This designates the start of the query string.
In your example, there is no ?, so no query string is started. According to RFC 1738, ampersands are not valid URL characters except for their designated purposes (to link variables in a query string together), so the link you provided is technically invalid.
The way around that invalidity, and what is likely happening, is a rewrite. A rewrite informs the server to show a specific file based on a pattern or match. For example, an .htaccess rewrite rule that may work with your example could be:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?B&Q-(.*)$ /scripts/b-q.php?variable=$1 [NC,L]
This rule would find any URL's starting with http://www.indeed.co.uk/B&Q- and show the content of http://www.indeed.co.uk/scripts/b-q.php?variable=jobs instead.
For more information about Apache rewrite rules, check out their official documentation.
Lastly, I would recommend against using ampersands in URLs, even when doing rewrites, unless they are part of the query string. The purpose of an ampersand in a URL is to string variables together in a query string. Using it out of that purpose is not correct and may cause confusion in the future.
A URI like /B&Q-jobs gets sent to the server encoded like this: /B%26Q-jobs. However, when it gets sent through the rewrite engine, the URI has already been decoded so you want to actually match against the & character:
Rewrite ^/?B&Q-jobs$ /a/specific/file.html [L]
This makes it so when someone requests /B&Q-jobs, they actually get served the content at /a/specific/file.html.
I need to strip out a certain part of my URLS being generated and want to use .htaccess.
Some links are being appended with "&Itemid=XX" after the .html.
Example:
http://www.site.com/conferences-and-events.html&Itemid=XX
XX could be one digit or four so I guess I need a wild card for that part. I know other questions have been answered related to stripping out certain parts of URLs using .htaccess but I can't seem to figure out how to get my specific string stripped out. Any help would be appreciated and sorry for being redundant and dense.
You'll want to use URL rewriting for that, something like this should work;
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (.*)&Itemid=\d{1,4}(.*) $1$2 [R]
Explanation: This regular expression matches anything ((.*)) followed by &Itemid= [1 to 4 decimals], followed by anything (another (.*)), and redirects ([R]) to the first anything concatenated with the second anything, thus taking out the &Itemid=xx part.