Forum Moderators: phranque
hello everyone, thanks for reading.
Background:
making a web application, most of the pages have fully functional mod_rewrites but I need one for a search box where you can search by tag.
Current Code: (Everything removed apart from whats relevant)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^\.htaccess$ - [F]
RewriteRule ^search/([0-9a-zA-Z!]+)$ search.php?tag=$1
RewriteRule ^search/$ search.php?
What happens just now is; if you go to domain.com/search it shows you search.php - PERFECT!
NOTE: FORM VALUES PASSED BY $_GET
Now on the search page, if you search for a single word like "tag" without the quotes it redirects you to domain.com/search/tag - Again thats perfect.
However if you do a search for say "tag tag2" then the mod_rewrite fails and I am taken to this page:
domain.com/search.php?tag=tag+tag2&search=Search
(please note that search is the name of the submit button and Search is its value - thats where they come from)
What I would like to happen is that the user is taken to
search/tag1+tag2
I would also like users to be able to enter LETTERS (any case), NUMBERS, Spaces - and +, & in the search box and as many tag words as they like, so they could search for "windows vista" and go to search/windows+vista or "windows+vista" and go to search/windows+vista or search for "windows - vista" and go to search/windows-vista
and so on.
In effect whatever they type in the search box takes them to search/THE ENTRY but without spaces and not allowing special characters like quotes etc
Does that make sense? What I dont want is them to be taken to search.php as that ruins the whole effect! I can handle all the decoding of the search query and stuff, I only need help with the mod_rewrite rule.
You need to capture more back references, and redirect accordingly.
Your question also isn't 100% clear as you talk about redirects but some of your code shows rewrites instead.
so domain.com/search takes you to search.php without a query being ran, but domain.com/search/tag would take you to search.php and would search the DB for tag. That part is working, what isnt working is allowing multiple tags to be entered in a text box and for the multiple tags to be shown as domain.com/search/tag1+tag1+tag2
They are rewrites, but I use PHP to do redirects to ensure that the .php extensions arent seen on pages with forms which can be submitted.
Hope that helps.
I am right in the middle of editing some PHP code, and should have read your question with a clearer head.
RewriteRule ^search/([0-9a-zA-Z!]+)$ search.php?tag=$1
RewriteRule ^search$ search.php?
However the original problem remains and I dont have the current skills or knowledge to come up with a complex enough regexp to work :(
Hang on one more moment. Clarity of problem definition is very important here.
Google uses the + to separate words out, and the - to negate a search query.
They would do this example search element as "windows+-vista" in the URL. That is, it would have both the + and the - in it.
I guess then tag+-tag2 would need to be allowed too, but I can handle the PHP logic to work out what to do when passed such a string to search the DB for.
b) PHP does redirects, after a page is submitted (like a new user with user id of 1 it redirects to domain.com/user/view/1) and the htaccess is used to make sure that the URL works correctly using mod_rewrite();
Apache/htaaccess is for rewrites and php for redirects or the links (for example my href to home is ahref="/home" etc.
could you write that out for me? the mod_rewrites i have I just cobbled together from a bajillion different sources and then amended, but new things I'll need help with.
Please :)
Otherwise, please see the regular expressions tutorial cited in our forum charter [webmasterworld.com]; Your specific questions with regard to a particular concept that you're demonstrably trying to learn will be welcome.
From the old proverb: If we feed you a fish, you'll come back hungry tomorrow. If we teach you to fish, you can feed yourself -- and teach others to fish as well.
Thanks,
Jim
Perhaps suggesting what concept I should learn or something, its not like I havent tried out a load of combinations before I posted - its just I dont understand what approach to take or even if its possible. So whilst suggesting I add a + or - is a little helpful, I really wanted someone to read my post.
RewriteRule ^search/([0-9a-zA-Z!+-&]+)$ search.php?tag=$1
Yeah but nobody has suggested a decent tutorial
Select library [webmasterworld.com] from the light blue bar near top of page:
Mod_Rewrite & Regular Expressions [webmasterworld.com]
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^\.htaccess$ - [F]
RewriteRule ^search/$ search.php? [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^search/([^/]+)$ /search.php?tag=$1 [L]
[R] stands for Redirect. The default is 302-Temporarily Moved. This can be set to any number between 300 and 400, by entering it as [R=301] or [R=YourNumberHere], but 301 (Permanently Moved) and 302 (Temporarily Moved) are the most common.
(If you just use [R] this will work, and defaults to 302-Temporarily Moved)
** Do not use this flag if you are trying to make a 'silent' redirect.
If I want a redirect thats always going to happen, but I don't want the user to ever see .php etc in the browser do I need to use one of those flags? At the moment I dont use any flags, but i will add in some [l] ones.
I will try out a few things and get back to you.
A rewrite allows you to connect a URL (that the user sees) to a filepath within the server, without exposing what that filepath actually is.
