Append file structure to PHP argument

[Serpent_Guard]

I want to give out the url 'http://www.example.com/tracker/path/to/file.xml', and the mod_rewrite will redirect that request to 'http://www.example.com/get_item.php?fileName=path/to/file.xml'.  get_item.php redirects the user to 'http://www.example.com/path/to/file.xml' with a 302 response, and executes some code.

 

Oh, and I also want the mod_rewrite to strip off any parameters placed in the original url, so 'http://www.example.com/tracker/path/to/file.xml?foo=foobar' does exactly the same thing as if there wasn't '?foo=foobar' at the end.  (This aspect of the coding is not critical, however)

 

My mod_rewrite code looks like this:

 

---

 

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^tracker/([\x00-\x7F]+)/?$ get_item.php?fileName=$1 [L]

 

---

 

However, it acts as if the .htaccess file wasn't even there - I get a 'Page not found' response from the  server.

 

Help would be much appreciated.

 

Note:  I've verified that the PHP code is not the issue - it works fine when the user browses directly to 'http://www.example.com/get_item.php?fileName=path/to/file.xml'.

[Serpent_Guard]

Just to clear things up, the get_item.php file acts as a hit counter, tracking how many times each request passed to it is downloaded.  Here's that code:

 

<?php

$url = $_GET['fileName'];
$url = substr($url,1);
header('HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily');
header('Location: '.$url);


//$len = strlen($url);

$counter = "counter/";
//$counter .= str_replace("/",":",substr($url,0,$len-4));
$counter .= str_replace("/",":",$url);
$counter .= ".txt";

$hits = file($counter);
$fp = fopen($counter , "w");

$hits[0] ++;
fputs($fp , "$hits[0]");
fclose($fp);

exit;
?>

 

 

So I've managed to get the mod_rewrite code to this:

 

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^tracker(.*)$ get_item.php?fileName=$1 [L]

 

If the URL is 'http://www.example.com/tracker/file.xml', it'll pass '/file.xml' to the fileName parameter, and I just have the PHP file cut off the leading '/'.  The hit counter registers 17 consecutive hits to the file before the browser calls it quits, as there are too many redirects.

 

If there is a deeper path, such as '/tracker/path/file.xml', it'll register one hit to 'path/file.xml', one hit to 'path/path/file.xml', one hit to 'path/path/path/path/file.xml', etc..., so the number of '/path' levels is doubled every time.  It does this five times before it actually passes it to the server, which unsuprisingly says that the file is not found.

[Serpent_Guard]

Actually, I figured it out.  As it turns out, the php code was redirecting the user with a relative file path, so the user got sent repeatedly back to '/tracker/path/to/file.xml'.  I fixed it by setting the URL to an absolute path.

 

<?php

$url = $_GET['fileName'];
$url = "http://www.example.com" . $url;
header('HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily');
header('Location: '.$url);