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Hmm... looks interesting.  Much easier than the custom 404 php page I set up to redirect such page links on binoware.  Bookmarked

hang on a sec... your htaccess file may not be getting the right path to your error page... put the following in a php file and upload via ftp, go to that php page and it will echo the full directory path.

<?

echo __FILE__;

?>

Thats just a shot in the dark though, i couldnt for the life of me get an htaccess redirect to work on the godaddy servers until i started using htaccess to password protect directories, then i found out about not having the correct directory path cause it couldnt find the password file... sneaky shtuff.

oi... that is a bit of a stuff up isnt it, well, im outa ideas...

mobtex wrote:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)-article.html  /script.php?val=$1&val2=$2

Thanks Andy - i'll give that a go

I just don't 'get' regex, and how to apply it to url rewriting; almost bought  a book on regex today.........

That line has certainly helped - thanks

I might be behind the times and Northie may have sorted his problem. Still, here's my answer.....................

The regex you need depends on what characters "some-category" and "my-page" consist of. For security reasons, you don't want to allow every possible character if only alphanumerics are used. Similarly, you don't want to allow alphas if only numerics are used.

So based on the example given:

Allow ALL characters:

RewriteRule ^/([^/])/([^/])/$ /index.php?category=$1&page=$2

Allow Alphanumeric only

RewriteRule ^/([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/$ /index.php?category=$1&page=$2

Allow Alpha only (uppercase and lowercase)

RewriteRule ^/([a-zA-Z]*)/([a-zA-Z]*)/$ /index.php?category=$1&page=$2

Allow numeric only:

RewriteRule ^/([0-9]*)/([0-9]*)/$ /index.php?category=$1&page=$2

Allow pretty much anything:

RewriteRule ^/([^/])/([^/])/$ /index.php?category=$1&page=$2

Allow Alphanumeric and a + sign (for spaces)

RewriteRule ^/([a-zA-Z0-9+]*)/([a-zA-Z0-9+]*)/$ /index.php?category=$1&page=$2

From the above, I think a man of Northie's intellect could figure out everything he needs. For those without a brain the size of a small planet, here's a few tips...................

Each Regex in a line corresponds with a numbered variable. eg, the first ([a-zA-Z0-9]*) will correspond with $1 and so on. Remember that, it's very useful to know, ESPECIALLY if you're regexing something that will never be passed in the get string.

the asterix outside the square brackets denotes that ANY NUMBER of characters will be present in the rewritten URL. If you don't have that, then it'll only parse URLs with just one character in the variable and everything else will 404.

notice the $ after the rewritten URL's final forward slash?
That tells the server that everything should be from the root of the beginning of the rewritten URL (where the carat ^ is). So, if you have somesite.com/some-category/some-page/ it'll know to find index.php on somesite.com. It's not 100% nessecary, sometimes causes problems by being there, and sometimes causes problems by not being there. It's something you need to figure out yourself.

You MUST put a forward slash in the URLs on the page. somesite.com/some-category/some-page/ is not the same as somesite.com/some-category/some-page to a server (not even sure it's the same to Google tbh). if it's not there, you'll get a 404.

special characters need escaping with \. ie ([a-zA-Z0-9-]*) won't work but ([a-zA-Z0-9\-]*) should do.

a-zA-Z will do upper and lower case. a-z only lower and A-Z only upper. Make sure you allow both if both will be in the links.

Hows that?

Kudos for the link to corz by Ryan. Cor is a top geezer and deserves all the traffic he can get!

Last edited by griffinsbridge (2008-04-08 03:35:41)

Cheers dude!
No point letting any knowledge die with me is there!!