[RESOLVED] mod_rewrite

[Neato]

Heyas, so I'm attempting to teach myself mod_rewrite in htaccess. I've been attempting to create a url rewrite like WP uses, but with just Parent/Child. So far I have:

RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)/$ parent.php?parcat=$1

RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)/(.*)/$ child.php?parcat=$1&subcat=$2

The parent works, but whenever I attempt to call the sub (child), it attempts to use parent instead.

I've tried multiple ways including changing all names, setting different virtual dir's, setting the regex to [A-Za-z] (There's no numbers, so [0-9] wouldn't need to be added), and calling them both through the same page. All to no avail *sigh*...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[SambaNeko]

I think your problem here is that .* means "any character, as many times as possible." So, it works in your first one because you're only getting one group; it doesn't work in the second one because it can never get to your second group: the first group is grabbing everything. Try this...

RewriteRule ^directory/([^/]*)/$ parent.php?parcat=$1
RewriteRule ^directory/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/$ child.php?parcat=$1&subcat=$2

[^/]* means "any character except for /, as many times as possible." When it gets to a /, it should stop grouping. At least I think that's right... I don't always gets these right on the first try.

[Neato]

Awesome. Thanks, Sambo! I was looking at some tutorials for Regex, and didn't see that anywhere. Any recommendations for a good tut for this by chance?

[SambaNeko]

Regex is still a topic that I'm not entirely confident with, myself. It doesn't help that there are variations to it based on which context you're in. But, for htaccess-flavored regex, I've bookmarked and returned to this page often for a reference. It's got a lot of info and examples.

[modpluz]

Hi neato, for regex tutorials you should see - http://www.regular-expressions.info/

@SambaNeko
Thanks for that solution...

Prior to now, if i encounter such problems, what i do is something similar to below

RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)/(.*)/$ child.php?parcat=$1&subcat=$2
RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)/$ parent.php?parcat=$1

so it'll always process this

RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)/(.*)/$ child.php?parcat=$1&subcat=$2

before this

RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)/$ parent.php?parcat=$1

thanks for that eye opener