.htacess RewriteRule to include "&" char into variables.

Hello,

What im trying to do is to use RewriteRule to have custom urls, what i want is having something like http://www.domain.com/the_name and using htacess make it go to show.php where "the_name" will be a variable for show.php, what i have works well except when the url contains the "&" char, this causes show.php to get the variable only until the part where the "&" char comes, i.e. for "/the_&_name", will only get "the_"

This is what i have :
Link : http://www.domain.com/parse_&_this

.htaccess :
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ show.php?name=$1 [L]
and also tried with :
RewriteRule ^([a-z,_,&]*)$ show.php?name=$1 [L]

show.php :
<?php
echo $_GET['name'];
?>

---------
This works fine for all names except the ones with the "&", does any body knows how this is done?

Example :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_&_Conquer

Any help is appretiated.
Regards,
David.

 

Yes, GET variables are separated by '&' characters.
So, to get the "variable" you need, you cannot use the $_GET/$_REQUEST array.

Try this:

show.php:

<?php 
echo $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];

PHP:

.htaccess:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ show.php?$1 [L]

Code (markup):

 

Thank you very much for the reply keyaa, it looks like a good way to do it.
I've also found a way to do it playing a bit with .htacess :
------------------------
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^&]+?)\&([^&]+?)$ $1\%26$2
RewriteRule ^([^&]+?)\&([^&]+?)\&([^&]+?)$ $1\%26$2\%26$3
RewriteRule ^([^&]+?)\&([^&]+?)\&([^&]+?)\&([^&]+?)$ $1\%26$2\%26$3\%26$4
RewriteRule ^show-(.*)/$ show.php?name=$1 [L,QSA]
------------------------
The 3rd line will check the url to see if there is one ampersand character, the next line will catch the ones with 2 ampersands and so on, finally the last line will give show.php the correct get variables.

This will work with most uncomon chars in the url, not all, i had a name with "+" character that didn't worked, this is because "+" is interpreted as a space.

Regards,
David.