How to display user defined (pretty) URLs

Question

I have created a text link on my Website.

1. when a user click on the link, it takes him to a the page: www.example.com/toronto_streets.php but, I want the URL to be displayed as www.example.com/toronto.on/

2. then when user selects one street from this page, the url will be www.example.com/street_landing_page.php?street=Option but, I want the URL to be displayed as www.example.com/toronto.on/house-for-sale-option

I tried with editing .htacccess file but that didnt work...

Here is what I added to the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule  ^toronto.on/house-for-sale-condo-mls/?$   house-for-sale-condo-mls.php  [NC]  #...

So will the above line Redirect www.example.com/toronto.on/house-for-sale-condo-mls/ to www.example.com/house-for-sale-condo-mls.php ?

when Im calling the URL, www.example.com/toronto.on/house-for-sale-condo-mls/ , Im getting this error :

The requested URL /toronto.on/house-for-sale-condo-mls was not found on this server.

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Update:

This is my current .htaccess file. It Redirects www.example.com/toronto.on to a page called cate.php with the city value= 'toronto' and province='on'.

Options +FollowSymLinks 
RewriteEngine on 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ example.com/$1 [R=permanent,L] 

Answer 1

In the .htaccess, you would use a set of rewrite rules, such as the following:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^toronto.on(/*)$ /toronto_streets.php [L]
RewriteRule ^toronto.on/house-for-sale-option /street_landing_page.php?street=option [L]

You can use this site to help you test the rewrite rules: click here

However, as others have pointed out, what appears in the URL bar will be what a href that is requested by the page. Thus the links on the page html should be modified to user the friendly URLs (eg /toronto.on/house-for-sale-option, rather than the backend url /street_landing_page.php?street=option

Answer 2

1) There are 2 mistakes in the Rewrite Rule you stated in your Question:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/house-for-sale-condo-mls.php?$ /toronto/house-for-sale-condo-mls/ [QSA,NC,L]

One is in your head: **You need to have your "friendly" urls embedded in any html you sent to the client. ** The .htaccess doesn't make bad to pretty URLS it makes pretty URLS internaly redirecting to the real site. That means that your Links on the site need to contain:

<a href="/house-for-sale-condo-mls.php">The Text</a>

The seccond one was a missing Backslash.

The same for Point 1 of your Question:

RewriteRule ^/toronto.on /toronto_streets.php [QSA,NC,L]

Ist probably a good Idea to put another Rewrite Rule like this in front of the Top ones:

 RewriteRule ^/toronto_streets.php /toronto.on  [R=301,L]

If somethere the Link isn't Change (an external ressource) it Redirects the user to the pretty URL.