Apache mod_rewrite path to query string for specific path format

Question

I've been working on this for weeks. I want to be able to use a friendly URL to pass variables to a PHP script. For example, if someone uses this URL:

https://example.com/foo/bar/who

I would like my PHP script to receive this:

https://example.com/index.php/?var1=foo&var2=bar&var3=who

The catch is that I ONLY want to do this rewrite when there are three vars in the path. If there are fewer or more than three, I do not want to rewrite the URL.

I've seen several other explanations related to this type of rewrite but nothing quite like this.

This is almost working, but not quite. I only want the rewrite done if there's something present for those first three variables. I know this is incomplete, but with this method at least the REQUEST_URI contains the values I can parse. But again, I only want to do this when there are three vars in the path.

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

Thank you.

Answer 1

You were pretty close, have it this way. Please make sure you clear your browser cache before testing your URLs. You had already created back references only thing you needed to use them, which I have added those now.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ index.php?var1=$1&var2=$2&var3=$3 [L]