How do I rewrite URLs that have GET variables in them?

Question

I have a site that makes use of GET variables to determine what to display.

@session_start();
@extract($_GET);
@extract($_POST);
.
.
.
if (!$menu) { include("home.php"); }
if ($menu=='buy') { include("buy.php"); }
if ($menu=='invalidbuy') { include("invalidbuy.php"); }
if ($menu=='buydone') { include("buydone.php"); }
.
.
.

I think I have to make use of the .htaccess file to rename my URLs from "/index.php?menu=faq" to "/faq". How can I do this??

Answer 1

You can use the following rule to rewrite any request of a path like /foobar internally to /index.php?menu=foobar:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^[^/]+$ index.php?menu=$1 [L]

The additional RewriteCond directive ensures that only non existing files (!-f) are rewritten.