How to write this URL rewrite rule?

Question

Using LAMP, is it possible to write rewrite rules to redirect URLs like the following?

http://example.com/topic/142 -> http://example.com/static/14/142.html

--Edit--

The rule is to get ID's first 2 numbers as folder name, then ID.html.

Answer 1

Is it possible, yes, surely.

RewriteRule /topic/(.+) /static/14/$1.html

However, this will give you the /14/ part every single time. As long as you don't have a hint were this part is encoded in your original URL, there is no way to change this.

Answer 2

Try this rule:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^topic/(([0-9]{2})[0-9]*)$ static/$2/$1.html

Answer 3

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(([0-9]{1,2})[0-9]*)$ /$2/$1.html

Greedy matching means that the first selector will pick up two characters if they are available.

However, I'm not sure that your rule makes much sense, as pages 14, 140-149 and 1400-1499 will be in the same directory. Might it make more sense to put 0-99, 100-199, etc in the same directory?

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{1,2})$ /0/$1.html
RewriteRule ^(([0-9]+)[0-9]{2})$ /$2/$1.html