htaccess rule is passing innecesary variable

Question

This is the file tree:

• /problem/
• /problem/index.php
• index.php
• category.php
• somefile.php

I have this 2 rules in the .htaccess that is sitting in the /

RewriteRule ^somedir$ /somefile.php [L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z-]+)$ /category.php?cat=$1 [QSA,L]

So...

• http://domain.com/somedir = OK
• http://domain.com/ = OK
• http://domain.com/problem/ < automatically adds ?cat=problem to the querystring. I want to avoid that extra ?cat=problem

I need to add a rule that doesn't add the cat=$1 when the /dir/ exists.

Answer 1

Just add a RewriteCond before your second rule. Basically, don't run that catch all if it starts with product:

RewriteRule ^somedir$ /somefile.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/product [NC]
RewriteRule ^([a-z-]+)$ /category.php?cat=$1 [QSA,L]

To prevent redirecting for a real file or directory, add these two lines before the rule:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d