How do I make .htaccess do what I want? :) (appending query string to url)

Question

Currently my .htaccess looks like this...

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

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


RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]  

It currently changes any /xxx.php file into /xxx. This is great for SEO. However, I also want Mr. htaccess to convert certain URLs into a URL + query string. For instance when user goes to

/specific/somerandominfo

Then somerandominfo is passed to the specific.php file. I normally have no problem doing this using rewrites, but because of my fancy catchall rewrite, I can't figure out how to do it.

For example if I add

RewriteRule ^specific/([^/]+)$ /specific.php?somerandominfo=$1 [NC]  

to my .htaccess, then hitting up /specific/somerandominfo just serves me a big fat 500 Internal Service Error.

Any help from you apache gurus out there would be so, so cool.

Thanks!

p.s. anybody want to also throw in any other cool SEO tricks that they like? I'll bake you cookies.

Answer 1

RewriteRule ^specific/([^/]+)$ /specific.php?somerandominfo=$1 [NC]

This is mostly correct. I'd just add the B flag, like this:

RewriteRule ^specific/([^/]+)$ /specific.php?somerandominfo=$1 [NC,B]

This causes the capture group $1 to be properly escaped for use in query strings. Note that you can still use QSA to retain the query parameters used in the original request (in addition to somerandominfo).

Perhaps you'll want to post your actual RewriteRule.

Answer 2

You are getting 500 error because your rules are creating an infinite cycle. Check apache error log to see if it is true. So you should design your rules properly. Maybe like that:

RewriteRule ^([^/]*)$ $1.php [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)$ $1.php?var=$2 [L]