How to mod_rewrite a number in url to a name

Question

I have a database where I'm picking up information and in this case

user 1023 = madonna

I'm having today an url which is:

http://domain.com/welcome.php?p=user&xoxo=1023

and I would like to have the url like this instead

http://domain.com/user/madonna

Answer 1

Try to use this htaccess

Before that you should backup your original htaccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^xoxo=([0-9]*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.site/user/madonna [R=301,L]

Answer 2

It cannot be done for a arbitrary number mapping, such as one defined in a database. Instead the application itself should handle the name <-> ID/number processing in this case.

The rewrite (if used) would only be used turn something like /user/madonna into /welcome.php?user=madonna ; likewise the 'pretty URL' should be generated by the application itself using the already-available username.

tldr; The application - not mod_rewrite - is responsible for transformation to/from the username (ie. "madonna") and the corresponding user ID (ie. 1023).

---

Anyway, a slightly different approach is to follow what StackOverflow does for URLs; it encodes the ID and a 'friendly' portion.

For instance a 'friendly question URL' is http//../questions/$id/$title while the only relevant portion of the URL is http://../questions/$id as the title portion is entirely irrelevant to locating the correct question. Similarly, my profile is http://../users/2864740/user2864740 but my username is irrelevant to processing the query and http://../users/2864740 is sufficient to access my profile.

Note: StackOverflow will immediately redirect to the correct-full-friendly-URL if the 'friendly' portion does not match the item referenced by ID; this is especially important for something like user accounts to mitigate spoofing. It also ensures the 'correct' URL is propagated after a title/username change.

In context of the question this would mean the pretty URL is http://domain.com/user/1025/madonna were the ID is already available and easily transformed to a query parameter.