How to remove php extension from pages except search results?

Question

Using htaccess I have these php rules:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

## don't touch /forum URIs
RewriteRule ^forums/ - [L,NC]

## hide .php extension snippet

# To externally redirect /dir/foo.php to /dir/foo
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L]

# To internally forward /dir/foo to /dir/foo.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ $1.php [L]

# To remove www header
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

Everything is working, except if I do a search, the search results page is not showing the results because it is taking out the php extension. Example: search/?s=building where "building" is the term used. Generally, it should look like this: search.php?s=building

How do I tell htaccess that I only wanted to hide the php extensions of the pages except the results page?

Answer 1

# To externally redirect /dir/foo.php to /dir/foo
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L]

To exclude your "search" page from the redirect you could include an additional condition. Only redirect when the requested URL is not "search.php".

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s[^.]+\.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !search\.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.php$ $1 [R=301,L]

I've tweaked the rules a bit to make them more efficient by specifically checking for the ".php" file extension in the RewriteRule. Removed the NC flag as this seems redundant. Changed from R (temporary) to R=301 (permanent) redirect - I presume this should be "permanent"? (Although it's good to test with a temporary - non-cached - redirect.)

However, why the "search" page doesn't work without the file extension would seem to be another issue. It should work! There seems to be another (301) redirect that is redirecting /search?s=world to /search/?s=world?

You also still need to resolve all your internal linking so that you link to URLs without the .php extension otherwise your site is going to be issuing a lot of unnecessary redirects.