htaccess w/ variables?

Here's my question....let's say I have a several subfolders....

http://www.nothing.com/subfolder/link.html

http://www.nothing.com/subfolder2/link.html



In each case, I'm trying to get .htaccess to rewrite the file with the subfolder involved...so for example...


link-subfoler.html
link-subfolder2.html

This isn't hard to go in and manually type out the name of every sub folder, however, when I start doing a lot of subfolders, it gets tedious...


Is there a way that htaccess can read part of the URL and use the subfolder part of it as part of the rewrite?

That would save me a ton of time! Thanks!

 

Something like..

RewriteRule ^/(.*?)/(.*?.html)$ file.php?sub=$1&file=$2

Havn't tried the above, but unless im totally of the track it should give you an idea.

 

Thanks, but I don't think that's what I'm looking for...this would be the pseudo code....


Set variable 'sub' in htaccess for current subdirectory name

the rewrite like so....
domain.com/filename-sub.html
domain.com/filename2-sub.html
domain.com/filename3-sub.html

I know how to do rewrites, but I'd like htaccess to be able to detect the current subfolder name and then use it in several of the rewrite urls...

 

Sounds like you need something like this, my syntax may be off a bit, but to give you a general idea:

RewriteRule ^/(.*)-(.*).html$ /$2/$1.html

This is using regular expressions which can be difficult to grasp sometimes. When you surround a match with parenthesis, it takes that as a variable - the first set of parens is $1, the second set is $2 and so on.

You have a couple of options for troubleshooting what you are trying to write - 1) check your error log. There should be a 404 error when it doesn't work. 2) enable logging for mod_rewrite with RewriteLog - but this has to be done in a conf file and is not allowed in .htaccess.

Mod Rewrite only rewrites urls as they come into the server, it does not change the output of files when they come from your server. So if you have a page with a link in it, mod_rewrite will not change the link. For some reason I thought you might be confused on this issue, although reading back through you posts I'm not sure why.

You can google for help with regular expressions, there are a ton of very helpful sites out there. If you are going to be doing a lot of it, I suggest grabbing O'Reilly's reg-ex pocket reference.

 

Okay. So I understand what the above expression does....takes a url, and rewrites it to a subfolder and file.....is there a way to do the exact opposite?

so, take the subfolder and file, and then write the url on that info?

 

Just switch it around

Rewriterule ^/(.*)/(.*).html /$2-$1.html

Again, I'm not sure if my syntax is correct, you may have to tweak it a little. I don't do rewrites very often. Maybe you have to escape the middle / by replacing it with \/

 

I got it to work!!! Thanks a ton!!!

I know it sounds silly, but this will be huge.

 

what was the final syntax?

 

Here's what worked....

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z]*)-(.*).html /$2/fix.php?state=$1 [L,NC]

I'm still having problems when the filename has a dash....ie

in other words, 'file-subfolder.html' works, but 'file-name-subfolder.html' doesn't...


i'm trying this, but it doesn't work...

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z]*)-([a-zA-Z]*)-(.*).html /$3/fix.php?state=$1&second=$2 [L,NC]


any ideas?

 

Not off the top of my head, but I believe Apache uses PCRE (Pearl Compatible Regular Expressions) and you are probably going to need to do a little research with lookahead or lookback validation.

Basically, you want to look for 2 dashes in the url and if there are 2, then group everything up to the second dash in the first match.

 

I appreciate the help.

Is there a way to store string data into a variable with Regular Expressions?

 

nope, it's all based on your matching expressions. It seems limited at times, but whenever I find a limitation a month later I find out that I was just attacking the problem the wrong way. If I run accross the lookahead docs I was reading a few weeks ago, I'll pass them along here.