Getting mod_rewrite to pass $_GET params?

Question

There's a couple other questions on this same topic on here that I've read, but mine is slightly different. I'm trying to do a very basic mod_rewrite:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^go/([^/\.]+)/?$ /go.php?page=$1

go.php looks like this:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors',1);
if(isset($_GET['page'])){
    echo 'page='.$_GET['page'];
}else{
    echo 'oh shnizzle!';
}
?>

Now, when I go to /go/someword in my browser, the $_GET param "someword" IS NOT passed along, and I get the message "oh shnizzle!" every time. What are possible reasons I'm not able to pass any $_GET params through mod_rewrite?

Answer 1

You need the QSA (query string append) flag on your rewrite rule.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^go/([^/\.]+)/?$ /go.php?page=$1 [QSA]

Answer 2

A few ideas...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/go/([^/\.]+)/?$ /go.php?page=$1 [QSA]

This should stop the mod_rewrite rules from being triggered if a valid page, script or directory is requested. It will also append any existing Query Strings.

In the go.php file, I would have the following:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors',1);
echo '<b>$_GET Variables</b><pre>';
var_dump( $_GET );
echo '</pre>';
?>

That way, rather than looking for a specific variable (at least until it behaves itself) you can see exactly what GET variables are being passed to the script.

Answer 3

You probably have MultiViews turned on. Add this to the top of your .htaccess file:

Options -MultiViews

And the problem should go away, hopefully.

To elaborate a little on what's going on if this is the case, your URL /go/someword points to a non-existent resource, so MultiViews transforms it into /go.php, which does exist. When this happens, the /somewhere bit is passed to PHP as $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], but go.php doesn't match your rewrite rule, so the rewrite is not performed to write that query string.