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=$1 [L]
What you do is add the id to every link so you system will on basis of ID but google/users see the nice URL.
You need to change the rewrite rule a bit (for your needs and server config) but it will explain the basics.
Related
I need your help creating some links using mod_rewrite.
I have some pages like:
register.php
login.php
And have the code for them:
RewriteRule ^register/?$ 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=$2 [L]
This will rewrite /news/N/<anything> to /index.php?id=news&article=N (where N is 1 or more digits).
However, since it rewrites <anything> you should also implement a redirect in your application when the non-canonical article_name is accessed. (Which again, is what StackOverflow does.)
And I have some products (that could have the same name in the same category) but with different ID's like: índex.php?id=products&p=30
How can I change it to /products/product-name
The same principle as mentioned above applies here also.
After this, is possible to "generate" an unique name?
You can generate this "unique name" in your application, not .htaccess. Build you URLs in your application etc.
Since I would like not set in the link the unique ID like "products/45342/product-name" ?
As mentioned above, either your product-name is unique, and behaves like your id. Or you incorporate the unique ID in the URL - this is the far more common approach, offers greatest flexibility and is less prone to error. A "short" URL like /products/45342 will redirect you to the correct canonical URL.
I am upgrading my site which involves new scripts and a different URL
structure. There are currently a few thousand pages so I want to
basically move them in to a subdirectory so that they are not lost.
I am not very confident with htaccess so can someone please confirm that
the first part I have done is correct:
Old URL: http://www.example.com/article/another-dir/page-group/whatever.html
RewriteRule ^article/?$ 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/$1 [R=301,NC,L]
I have an url that looks like:
/platforms.php?platform_id=xxx
where xxx is a number
I'm rewriting the URL inside the php application. So, for example the above url would look like:
/xbox/ or /playstation/
Now in .htaccess I have:
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ 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 $_GET['platform_name']
Good day all,
I am trying to master the ,magic of mod_rewrite and require some advice/help.
I am trying to turn an URL from:
http://www.domainname.com/preview/about/5
To this:
http://www.domainname.com/preview/about
The issue is, I still need to retain the [id] part of the original URL to be used as a GET later on and it not be visible.
The code I have thus far:
RewriteRule ^preview\/([^/]+)\/([^/]+)\/$ /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?
I'm creating a frontpage for my website with a single form and input text, Google-style. It's working fine, however, I want to generate a pretty URL based on the input. Let's say, my input is called "id", and using the GET method of form, and the action defined to "/go/", on submission, the URL will be:
site.com/go/?id=whateverIType
and I want to change it to
site.com/go/whateverIType
I was thinking on Mod Rewrite, but if the user put something in the URL, like:
site.com/go/?dontwant=this&id=whateverIType&somemore=trash
I want to ignore the other variables but "id", and rewrite the rule.
What's the better way of get this done? Thanks in advance!
PS: I'm using CodeIgniter, maybe there's something I can use for it as well. I already have a controller for "go".
I'm not familiar with CodeIgniter, but you can try the following RewriteRule
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^\/go\/
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([^&]*)
RewriteRule (.*) /go/%1? [L,R]
The %1 references the regex group from the previous RewriteCond, and the trailing ? will strip the querystring from the redirected URL.
Hope this helps.
Mod_rewrite supports conditions and rules with RegEx, so you could have a rule that matched the ?id=XXXX, that would extract it from the URL (keeping the other parameters), and rewrote the URL accordingly.
However... I don't think you want to do this, because if you rewrite the URL to be /go/Some+Search+Query, you won't be able to pick it up with say, PHP, without parsing the URL out manually.
It's really tough to have custom, SEO-friendly URLs with user input, but it is technically possible. You're better off leaving in the ?id=XXX part, and instead, using mod_rewrite in the opposite approach... take all URLs that match the pattern /go/My+Search+Terms and translate that back into something like ?id=My+Search+Terms, that way you'll be able to easily parse out the value using the URL's GET parameters. This isn't an uncommon practice - Google actually still uses URL parameters for user input (example URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=test).
Just keep in mind that mod_rewrite rewrites the URL before anything else (even PHP), so anything you do to the URL you need to handle. Think of mod_rewrite as a regular expression-based, global "Find and Replace" for URLs, every time a page is called on the server. For example, if you remove the query string, you need to make sure your website/application/whatever accounts for that.
In application/config/routes.php
$route['go/(:any)'] = "go/index/$1";
Where go is your controller and index is the index action.
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/routing.html
You can use something like this in your .htaccess if you aren't already:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|css|js|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]