I Need Some Help And Have A Few Questions Rewriting URLS!

[designer76]

Hi,

 

The code below works perfectly except for one thing. I want to be able to either add a trailing slash or make it so that the url can work with a trailing slash and without one. So: www.mysite.com/paintings and www.mysite.com/paintings/ would both work. As it stands right now, the trailing slash does not work no matter what I do. I have tried a few rewrite scripts that I have found, but the issue is that my url ends up not working, and it will read like: mysite.com/folder/mysite/html/paintings.php. The scripts that I have tried are basically reading the entire root folder on the server instead of just the HTML folder.

 

My second question is is there a way that I can rewrite all of the urls on my site without having to create new code inside the .htaccess file? For example, in the code below, if I add an orange.php page inside of my acrylics folder, I am going to have to paste:

 

RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+) paintings/acrylics/orange.php?page=$3 [L]  
RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([a-z]+) paintings/acrylics/orange.php?page=viewall [L]

 

into the .htaccess file, and so on, as I add new pages. That just seems like the wrong way to go about things, and the .htaccess file can get large fairly quickly if I have lots of pages, but this stuff is fairly new to me, so I could be wrong.

 

Any help given is much appreciated. Thank you!

 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.xml -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.xml

RewriteRule ^designs/([0-9]+) designs.php?page=$1 [L]   
RewriteRule ^designs/([a-z]+) designs.php?page=viewall [L]

RewriteRule ^paintings/([0-9]+) paintings.php?page=$1 [L]   
RewriteRule ^paintings/([a-z]+) paintings.php?page=viewall [L]

RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+) paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=$3 [L]  
RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([a-z]+) paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=viewall [L]

RewriteRule ^artwork/([women]+)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+) artwork/oils/red.php?page=$3 [L]  
RewriteRule ^artwork/([women]+)/([a-z]+)/([a-z]+) artwork/oils/red.php?page=viewall [L]

[designer76]

If this is any help, I found this code below that fixes most of my problems except for two issues.

 

1. I do not want the trailing slash to effect my search page at all, because it is causing problems.

2. I can not get it to work correctly with my paging. For example: both mysite.com/acrylics/viewall/ and mysite.com/acrylics/viewall (no trailing slash) worked with the mod_rewrite I posted above, but now it doesn't. I get an error saying that viewall.php does not exist. It seems like I may be close, but I just need some help to get this working properly. Can anyone assist?

 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])/$ $1.php [L]

# Forces a trailing slash to be added
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/)$
RewriteRule (.*)$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

[designer76]

Is anyone able to help with this?

[DavidAM]

RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+) paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=$3 [L]  

 

First, I don't think this code is doing what you think it is doing. ([paintings]+) -- The parenthesis make it a capturing group so you can refer to the value as $1 in the rewrite. The square brackets make it a character class so any of the letters inside the bracket must be matched: "aginpst" are the letters in your character class (I just removed the repeating ones and alphabetized it). The "+" means 1 or more of the letters (from that class). So you are rewriting artwork/ants/bugs/2 to paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=2.

 

Second, what distinguishes this rewrite rule from the one you wanted to go to "organge"? They are exactly the same as far as I can see.

 

Third, why are you capturing the first two values, you are not using them in the rewrite.

 

I think you need to rethink what you are trying to accomplish. It might actually solve your question about orange.

 

As for the trailing slash; I usually use something like:

RewriteRule ^artwork/paintings/(blue)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+)/? paintings/acrylics/$1.php?page=$3 [L]  

Which makes the trailing slash optional for that rewrite. Granted, I'm no expert at this, and I still have problems with the trailing slash from time-to-time.

[designer76]

RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+) paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=$3 [L]  

 

First, I don't think this code is doing what you think it is doing. ([paintings]+) -- The parenthesis make it a capturing group so you can refer to the value as $1 in the rewrite. The square brackets make it a character class so any of the letters inside the bracket must be matched: "aginpst" are the letters in your character class (I just removed the repeating ones and alphabetized it). The "+" means 1 or more of the letters (from that class). So you are rewriting artwork/ants/bugs/2 to paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=2.

 

Second, what distinguishes this rewrite rule from the one you wanted to go to "organge"? They are exactly the same as far as I can see.

 

Third, why are you capturing the first two values, you are not using them in the rewrite.

 

I think you need to rethink what you are trying to accomplish. It might actually solve your question about orange.

 

As for the trailing slash; I usually use something like:

RewriteRule ^artwork/paintings/(blue)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+)/? paintings/acrylics/$1.php?page=$3 [L]  

Which makes the trailing slash optional for that rewrite. Granted, I'm no expert at this, and I still have problems with the trailing slash from time-to-time.

 

Thanks for the reply sir, but I am still confused. I am basically new to url rewriting, so I don't really know much about what you stated. I wasn't trying to get get over-complicated with the code that I posted, it's just what I was able to piece together that worked with my website paging code. I am just looking for as simple of a rewrite as possible (that can work with my paging) that will prevent me from having to create a new rewrite rule every time I add new folders/pages/content to my site.

[designer76]

Actually, I have figured out the issue with having to make a new rewrite rule every time I add a new page or folder with new content.

 

The only issue I am having now is making this condition:

 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule (.*) $1\.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]

 

Work with my paging condition here:

 

RewriteRule ^designs/([0-9]+) designs.php?page=$1 [L]   
RewriteRule ^designs/([a-z]+) designs.php?page=viewall [L]

RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([0-9]+) paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=$3 [L]  
RewriteRule ^artwork/([paintings]+)/([a-z]+)/([a-z]+) paintings/acrylics/blue.php?page=viewall [L]

 

The condition on the top allows people to type a trailing slash at the end of the url and have it redirect back to a url that does NOT have the trailing slash on it. The condition I was using before would throw an internal server error any time someone typed a trailing slash at the end of the url. The problem is that now my paging is throwing an internal server error with the new trailing slash condition that I am using. I have tried a bunch of things, but I can't figure out how to make the two work together. If anyone could help me with this last little bit, that would be awesome. I am almost there.

 

Thanks.

[designer76]

Actually, I was able to solve it. I found and manipulated some code that worked for me.