How to strip out part of a URL with mod_rewrite

Question

I am trying to redirect from this:

www.mysite.com/product.html?item=example

to:

www.mysite.com/example

I have this rewrite rule in my .htaccess file but it isn't working:

RewriteRule ^/product\.html\?item=(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,L] 

Any help is much appreciated.

Here's what I have now:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^item=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^/product\.html$ /%1 [R=301,L] 

And here is the Final result after I got rid of forward slash at the beginning of the rule and added a question mark at the end of the rule to get rid of the query string:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^item=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^product\.html$ /%1? [R=301,L] 

Answer 1

Because you are in an .htaccess file, you'll want to remove the leading slash from your RewriteRule :

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^item=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^product\.html$ /%1? [R=301,L]

In reference to the query string being passed through, the Apache 2.2 documentation for mod_rewrite says this about it:

Modifying the Query String

By default, the query string is passed through unchanged. You can, however, create URLs in the substitution string containing a query string part. Simply use a question mark inside the substitution string to indicate that the following text should be re-injected into the query string. When you want to erase an existing query string, end the substitution string with just a question mark. To combine new and old query strings, use the [QSA] flag.

So as you discovered, you need only to add a ? after the substitution.