htaccess - rewrite urls with php and mysql

Question

I'm trying to do a rewrite of /example-friendly-url to display the content of /posts.php?id=1 .

Both the friendly url value and the id are stored in a mysql table.

Here's what I've written so far but something's not right:

posts.php:

include('/functions.php');
$post = getPost($_GET['id']);
$param = getSlug($_GET['param']);

functions.php:

function getPost($id) {
    $id = (int) $id;
    $query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM list WHERE id = '$id'") or die(mysql_error());
    return mysql_fetch_assoc($query);
}

function getSlug($param) {
    $query = mysql_query("SELECT id FROM list WHERE slug = '$param'") or die(mysql_error());
    return mysql_fetch_assoc($query);
}

.htaccess:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/posts.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/posts.php?param=$1 [NC,L]

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The leading slash is removed when mod_rewrite rules are processed in an htaccess file, so you don't want the ^/ in front of the regex:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/posts.php?param=$1 [NC,L]

You are passing a "slug" as _GET['param'] . There's no "id". What you need to do in your posts.php is turn that slug into an ID:

include('/functions.php');

$post_id = getSlug($_GET['param']);
$post = getPost($post_id);

Of course, making sure that $_GET['param'] is sanitized, using something like mysql_real_escape_string (deprecated, you really want to be using mysqli ).