Web service URL rewrite on Godaddy Linux account

Question

I have a Godaddy shared Linux hosting account. I assume that for this issue I'll need to rewrite URLs, but my Apache knowledge is quite limited, so please excuse me in advance if the question is too noob-ish :).

for domain xxx.com, I call my PHP web service like this:

http://service.xxx.com/catalog.php?action=getcatalog&catalogid=7

I want to be able to call it like this:

http://service.xxx.com/catalog/getcatalog?catalogid=7

Since I have several services with several parameter names, the variables in this equation are the name of the page, the action and the parameters

(i.e. http://service.xxx.com/X/Y?Z=W => http://service.xxx.com/X.php?action=Y&Z=W) As an added complication, some of those services have more than one parameter.

The questions are: 1. having a shared server with no access to the httpd.conf file, is this even possible? 2. If so, what do I need to do?

TIA, Guy

Answer 1

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule ^(\w+)/(\w+)$ $1.php?action=$2 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

the QSA part is supposed to pass any other parameter.