URL Rewrites for magento custom module - .htaccess

Question

I am trying to create some user friendly URLs for my module.
The module name is landing. Right now, I use the index controller and index action, and then grab a string "page" from the URL an grab my object based on that. So, my URLs look like this:
http://www.example.com/landing/index/index/page/CoolPage
My current idea is to structure this url as /landing/{page}, so that it would be just:
http://www.example.com/landing/CoolPage
At first, I tried accomplishing this using htaccess. I have the following:
RewriteRule ^landing/([a-z\-]+)(/)?$ landing/index/index/page/$1 [R,L]
Which works but does a redirect instead of a rewrite. I also tried it with just [L] and without the [] on the end, but I just end up at my 404 page.
Ideally I would use a config rewrite, as that could be packaged with my module, but I can't find any documentation on using them like this. I would be happy using .htaccess or even a db based rewrite, if it worked as desired.
Is there a way to do a rewrite like this in Magento?

Answer 1

I think I had the exact same request from a client some time ago and here is how I managed it, which I think is the easiest and simpliest way...
Actually, it is possible to make a rewrite right into your module's config.xml file.
In this example, all URLs like
http://www.domain.com/landing/whatever
will be rewritten to
http://www.domain.com/landingpage/page/view/whatever
Config.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<My_LandingPage>
<version>0.0.1</version>
</My_LandingPage>
</modules>
<frontend>
<routers>
<landingpage>
<use>standard</use>
<args>
<module>My_LandingPage</module>
<frontName>landingpage</frontName>
</args>
</landingpage>
</routers>
</frontend>
<global>
<!-- Rewrite requested routes -->
<rewrite>
<my_landingpage_page_view>
<from><![CDATA[#^/landing/#]]></from>
<to>/landingpage/page/view/</to>
<complete>1</complete>
</my_landingpage_page_view>
</rewrite>
</config>
Controller
<?php
class My_LandingPage_PageController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action {
/**
* View page action
*/
public function viewAction() {
// Get the requested path (/landing/whatever)
$pathInfo = $this->getRequest()->getOriginalPathInfo();
// Extract the requested key (whatever)
$pathArray = explode('/landing/', $pathInfo);
$requestedKey = $pathArray[1];
// So, from there you can use $requestedKey to load any model using it.
// This is also where you will load and render your layout.
}
}
Side note about layout
As the real controller action that is called is "landingpage/page/view", if you need some layout for this module, its handle will be <landingpage_page_view>.

Answer 2

This is a textbook custom router case if I've ever seen one. You can take the approach of the CMS router and adjust the path on the request object so that your controllers can match using the Standard router.
Your other alternative is to create an indexer to create rewrites for your module's entities and store them in the core_url_rewrite table.