Removing the script extension with URL rewriting on Apache

Question

Given a (slightly theoretical) physical disk layout of:

\products\cameras\50d.jpg
\products\cameras\20d.jpg
\products\lenses\18-55.jpg
\products\lenses\28-135.jpg
\products.php

At the moment, I've URLs of the form:

/products.php/
/products.php/cameras/
/products.php/cameras/50d

With the products.php using the PATH_INFO to make a decision on what to display.

I'm struggling to rewrite the URL to remove the .php, but still allow static resources to be retrievable though?

Answer 1

Firstly all those back-slashes must be forward-slashes. The \ is used to "escape" special characters, not for folder separation.

Rewriting products.php to products will not work if you have a products folder already. I'd suggest moving all the images to a different directory like /images/cameras/50d.jpg. Then you can do this:

RewriteRule ^products products.php

With that you will need to parse the requested URL in PHP to find the variables. You could also use this:

RewriteRule ^products/([^/]+) products.php?cat=$1
RewriteRule ^products/([^/]+)/([^/]+) products.php?cat=$1&prod=$2

Now in your PHP script you automatically have the required variables via $_GET['cat'] and $_GET['prod'].

EDIT: actually you're right, it is possible to have both, as long as all the images are limited to specific extensions. I think this will work:

RewriteRule ^products/(.+).jpg products/$1.jpg [L]
RewriteRule ^products/([^/]+) products.php?cat=$1
RewriteRule ^products/([^/]+)/([^/]+) products.php?cat=$1&prod=$2

Answer 2

Turns out that this works, and still allows resources within to work.

RewriteRule ^products([^\.]+)$ products.php$1