How to NOT match a word in mod_rewrite

Question

Please help, I'm going crazy!

RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]+)?/?search/?$ search.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [NC,L]

This is my current code. Sometimes people will visit mysite.com/search, other times they will visit mysite.com/boris/search and I detect a user with an empty($_GET['id']) check.

However I am creating another search, mysite.com/products/search which leads to products_search.php

I need my original RewriteRule to match any user EXCEPT the word 'products'.

I have tried so many combinations.

RewriteRule ^(!products&[a-z0-9_-]+)?/?search/?$ search.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [NC,L]

I'm not very good with regex/mod_rewrite but I something like the above should work? I just need an AND operator as clearly & doesn't work, but I can't find one!

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Not exactly "Not matching a word" - but you can add a Condition on the rewrite to say "If the URL doesn't match this pattern"

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/products
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]+)?/?search/?$ search.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [NC,L]

Which is generally the most common way to do things like this - as conditions can also be chained together.

You can find more information about RewriteCond here :- http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritecond

Answer 2

If mod_rewrite supports lookaheads, you can use

RewriteRule ^(?!products)([a-z0-9_-]+)?/?search....

According to this question on serverfault.com newer versions do.

The part (?!products) tells the regex engine to look ahead and fail if it finds "products".

Answer 3

You have two options: Either use a RewriteCond to restrict the already matched string:

RewriteCond $1 !=products
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]+)?/?search/?$ search.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [NC,L]

Or since Apache 2, you can also use a negated look-ahead assertion:

RewriteRule ^(?!products/)([a-z0-9_-]+)?/?search/?$ search.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [NC,L]

Besides that, you can also use the QSA flag instead of appending QUERY_STRING manually. And note that your current pattern will also allow something like /foobarsearch/, so it doesn’t have the separating /.