htaccess directory to file redirect problem

Question

I’m trying to use the following .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^images/
RewriteRule (.*) view.php?picid=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/user/(.*)$ /users.php?user=$1

I want two things to happen: Whenever someone requests /1234, it redirects to /view.php?picid=1234, and also when someone visits /users/bob, it redirects to /users.php?user=bob.

My code however, doesn’t seem to be working correctly.

Answer 1

There are several ways to do that. Here’s one that should work:

RewriteRule ^user/(.+)$ users.php?user=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)$ view.php?picid=$1 [L]

The first rule will catch any request that’s URI path begins with /user/ followed by one or more arbitrary characters. And the second will catch any request that’s URI path begins with / followed by one or more digits.

Answer 2

The initial problem with your rules is that the RewriteRule with (.*) will match everything.

If you do not want it to match a URL with a slash in it (such as users/bob), try ^([^/]*)$

Secondly, after a URL is rewritten, the new URL goes through your rules again. If you want to avoid matching something that has already been rewritten once, you should add a condition like

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.php