I'd like my URL to look like this:

example.com/products/123/title-of-this-product

The actual URL is this:

example.com/products.php?id=123&title=title-of-this-product

The .htaccess file correctly interprets my URLs so that users who are on this page only see the clean URL. However, if I try to use $_GET['id'] on the products.php page, the script crashes because it doesn't recognize any id in the URL.

.htaccess code:

Options  FollowSymLinks  MultiViews

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([0-9] )(?:/([^/]*))?/?$ ./products.php?id=$1&title=$2 [L,NC]

products.php code:

$product_id = isset($_GET['id']) ? $_GET['id'] : "Error! I can't find your product!";

How can I retain the URL parameters for PHP functions if I want a clean URL?

CodePudding user response：

You actually have 2 problems here...

1. MultiViews (part of mod_negotiation) is enabled and it's this that is serving products.php.
2. Your RewriteRule pattern is incorrect and won't match the requested URL.

Options  FollowSymLinks  MultiViews

You need to disable MultiViews (you have explicitly enabled it). It is MultiViews (part of mod_negotiation) that is serving your products.php file (without any URL parameters), not the mod_rewrite directive that follows. MultiViews essentially allows extensionless URLs with minimal effort, however, it can be the cause of unexpected conflicts (with mod_rewrite) - as in this case.

Your RewriteRule directive is not actually doing anything. If the .htaccess file is located in the document root then the RewriteRule pattern ^([0-9] )(?:/([^/]*))?/?$ does not match the requested URL (/products/123/title-of-this-product), so the directive is not actually processed at all (although MultiViews would still override this even if it did).

Try it like this instead:

# Disable MultiViews
Options  FollowSymLinks -MultiViews

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^products/([0-9] )(?:/([^/]*))?/?$ products.php?id=$1&title=$2 [L,NC]

You were missing products from the start of the URL-path matched by the RewriteRule pattern. Without products/ at the start of the regex it would only match if you are in a /products/ subdirectory, ie. /products/.htaccess. The RewriteRule directive matches relative to the location of the .htaccess file itself.