Rewrite dynamic url structure with .hataccess

Question

I've tried to rewrite the dynamic URL (below) to a slightly different structure; either does not work or I am not sure if it is correct:

• Old URL (URL#1): index.php?lang=AAA&zone=BBB&city=CCC&str=DDD&search=EEE
• New URL (URL#11): index.php?lang=AAA&country=BBB&place=CCC&street=DDD

*basically changed the names and the "search" string is not important any more

• what I am trying to achieve is redirecting all visitors from (old) dynamic URL#1 to (new) dynamic URL#11

In a second step, after all search engines show the new urls and we finished all test that are easier with non-sef urls, we would like to rewrite URL#11 to URL#2

• New URL (URL#11): index.php?lang=AAA&country=BBB&place=CCC&street=DDD
• Sef URL (URL#2): /AAA/BBB/CCC/DDD

I am not very familiar with apache programming and even when my solution works, we are not sure if it is the right one or if it will generate errors with certain URLs. Any help would be highly appreciated in creating a .htaccess file that does the step 1 redirection and a separate .htaccess file to be used later, for SEF urls. THANK YOU!

Answer 1

Assuming your variables only ever consist of lowercase letters and digits, try this:

RewriteRule ^/([a-z0-9]+)/([a-z0-9]+)/([a-z0-9]+)/([a-z0-9]+)$
    /index.php?lang=$1&country=$2&place=$3&street=$4
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING}
    ^lang=([a-z0-9]+)&zone=([a-z0-9]+)&city=([a-z0-9]+)&str=([a-z0-9]+)&search=[a-z0-9]+$
RewriteRule ^index.php$
    /index.php?lang=%1&country=%2&place=%3&street=%4 [R=permanent]

(Note that there must be no line breaks, but I've inserted them here with indents just to make the block readable on this webpage.)

Answer 2

http://example.com/index.php?lang=AAA&zone=BBB&city=CCC&str=DDD&search=EEE

redirected to:

http://example.com/AAA/BBB/CCC/DDD

silently mapped to:

http://example.com/index.php?lang=AAA&country=BBB&place=CCC&street=DDD

You may try this in one .htacces file in root directory:

Options +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} lang=([^&]+)&zone=([^&]+)&city=([^&]+)&str=([^&]+)&search=  [NC]
RewriteRule .* /%1/%2/%3/%4?   [R=301,L,NC]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?  [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index\.php                          [NC]
RewriteRule .* /index.php?lang=%1&country=%2&place=%3&street=%4 [L,NC]

If the query contains parameters in this format: %nn, try adding the B flag to both rules. Example: [L,NC,B].

Answer 3

Here is the code that worked (first step), from faa:

Options +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} lang=([^&]+)&zone=([^&]+)&city=([^&]+)&str=([^&]+)&search=  [NC]
RewriteRule .* /index.php?lang=%1&country=%2&place=%3&street=%4 [L,NC]