Rewrite URLs help

[sperko]

I am new to using .htaccess so I hope you can help me

I would like to rewrite www.example.com/hello/test.html to www.example.com/hello/test/

I have many pages organized in separate directories for example:

/community/page1.html
/community/page2.html
/news/sitenews.php
/news/worldnews.php
/resources/stuff1.html
/resources/stuff2.html

and I would like those pages to appear as follows:

/community/page1/
/community/page2/
/news/sitenews/
/news/worldnews/
/resources/stuff1/
/resources/stuff2/

Thank you!

 

[sperko]

Ok I have made it work but I'm not sure if it's correct please can you check

I have created a directory called /testdir/ - inside this directory are 2 files called file_1.html and file_2.html

My .htaccess in /testdir/ looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^test1$ file_1.html
RewriteRule ^test2$ file_2.html

When I access /testdir/test1 - I can see the content from file_1.html
When I access /testdir/test2 - I can see the content from file_2.html

Is this the correct way to do it? Thanks

 

[sperko]

sorry if this is in the wrong place **

 

[socialsq]

Sperko I wish I knew how to do that!

 

[essellar]

It's a right way to do that, but you're going to wind up with a few billion rewrite rules if your site gets to be any size, and that wouldn't be good. If you've got a combination of static files and scripts, the best method would probably be to first convert to a file (.html), and serve that file if it exists. If it doesn't exist, then rewrite again to a script parameter/parameter set. (Or try a different file type for giggles first before going to the nuclear option.)

There's a reasonably understandable mod_rewrite guide at Apache.org that's probably worth looking at. It sort of assumes you've got a basic handle on regular expressions, though, and that's really the hard part of URL rewriting (even if it's a simple example of RegEx use). Still, for open source documentation, it's pretty not too painful.

 

[sperko]

Thank you essellar!

I was hoping for an easier way because like you said, if I have many pages I will need to add them all to the .htaccess to rewrite them...

The guide looks very detailed so I will read through it and look for a solution!

 

[sperko]

** edit **

My new .htaccess simply removes the .html and .php file extensions from the files in /testdir/ so I can access example.html by going to /testdir/example

Here is my .htaccess

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /testdir

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /testdir

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html

 

[sperko]

All fixed! See my edit

Just a quick question is it necessary to put RewriteEngine on and RewriteBase /testdir twice in the .htaccess?

 

[essellar]

No, just the once will do. You only need to turn the engine on once, and you don't need to set the rewrite base again unless it changes (like with a new condition/ruleset that points to a different place after the first set of checks is done).

 

[sperko]

Thank you!