How to handle special characters in .htaccess rules?

Question

In my .htaccess file I have defined following rule,

RewriteRule t/([^.]+)/$ /videos/tag.php?tag=$1 [QSA]

The above rule works fine if I am browsing http://example.com/videos/t/world+news/ or http://example.com/videos/t/events/

but when I am browsing http://example.com/videos/t/business+%26+world/ (here original tag is: business & world) then in my query string tag variable I am getting only business. '& world' is not coming when I am fetching variable data through $_GET['tag']

Can anyone please tell where is the problem in the above rule??

Answer 1

Try the B flag to escape the backreference:

RewriteRule ^t/([^.]+)/$ /videos/tag.php?tag=$1 [B,QSA]

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Edit   How about this:

RewriteRule ^([^&]*)&(.*)/$ $1\%26$2 [N,NE]
RewriteRule ^t/([^.]+)/$ /videos/tag.php?tag=$1 [QSA]

The first rule is to replace the & with %26.