Manage slugs with PHP and .htaccess (mod_rewrite)

Question

Let's call my site:

www.example.com

and I have a PHP file like this:

www.example.com/product.php?id=50

I would like to access it by using

www.example.com/product/50

but ALSO, very important, I have several subdirectories like

www.example.com/subsite/product.php?id=50
www.example.com/subsubsite/product.php?id=50

That must become

www.example.com/subsite/product/50
www.example.com/subsubsite/product/50

How can I solve it at best with PHP and .htaccess using mod_rewrite? I banged my head with other questions like this one but to no avail.

I can't seem to find a solution that works flawlessly, taking care of all imported files like CSS, JS and PHP classes.

Answer 1

Ok so this might not be the complete answer but should help you find your way.

You can use regex to match your desired path pattern. So for example your htaccess might look something like...

# Check if module is installed
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# Check query for matching pattern and pass id, but also append additional query strings
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\/]+\/)?product\/([0-9]+)$ /$1product.php?id=$2 [L,QSA]

# If not file or directory on server, send to 404.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /404.php [L]

</IfModule>

---

And what this does is...

1. Match the uri with a regex pattern

Regex: ^([^\/]+\/)?product\/([0-9]+)$

1. ^ - Start of string.
2. ([^\/]+\/)? - matches any directory (if exists) and stores it for reuse.
3. product\/([0-9]+) - Your desired path eg product/50 and stores the number "id" for reuse.
4. $ - End of string.

2. Pass captured directory and id to our file

Like so: /$1product.php?id=$2 [L,QSA]

1. $1 is our directory name including the trailing slash eg subsubsite/
2. $2 is our product id eg 50
3. [L,QSA] The QSA flag means we can access additional query string parameters eg /product/50?show=all&updated=1 . More about flags can be found here http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/flags.html#flag_qsa

3. 404 anything not matching

Like so:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /404.php [L]

1. !-f If request is not a file
2. !-d If request is not a directory
3. /404.php The file used for presenting a 404 error.

---

Getting the id...

With the above, you can get the ID within your product.php file like so:

$id = (int)$_GET[ 'id' ];