Need help with htaccess file please

[asher02]

Hi all,

Cant figure how to make this work.

I need to redirect about 250 products pages that my shopping cart generate on its search page to the actual static pages that I have on my website.

So I will need to hard code all of them but I just need the code:)

The url I need to rewrite looks like this:

http://www.example.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6117&Category_Code=

What I want to do is to redirect to a static page that I already have on the server every url that has "Screen=PROD" and a product code(in this case its DSM-6117). The product code is the only string that changes in the url. The "Screen=PROD" will only be in a url I need to redirect.

I know I can match the whole url and redirect it to the static page but I'm trying to find a way to make the file smaller.

Any help will be appreciated

Thank You.

[jdMorgan]

See if this thread [webmasterworld.com] helps get you started, and please take a look at our forum charter for more information about mod_rewrite, regular expressions, and how to get the most from this forum.

Thanks,
Jim

[asher02]

Thank you Jim for the link, it gave me a good start point.

So now I have this:

To redirect
http://www.example.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6116&Category_Code=

to http://www.example.com/dir/page.htm

I use:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/Merchant2/merchant.mvc$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6116(.+)

RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.example.com/dir/page.htm? [R=301,L]

And its working fine, however since I'm going to use about 250 redirects I am looking for a way to make the code smaller so it will run faster.

Any suggestion?

[jdMorgan]

Move the REQUEST_URI pattern (sans the leading slash if your code is in .htaccess) to the RewriteRule, and eliminate that first RewriteCond.

There's also no need for the "(.+)" at the end of the second RewriteCond's pattern. If you wish to require more characters following "6116", then a single "." will do, since there is no end-anchor. Or you could be more specific and require the additional character to be numeric, or alphabetic, or an ampersand -- whatever is appropriate.

Jim

[asher02]

Thank you Jim for helping me.

Move the REQUEST_URI pattern (sans the leading slash if your code is in .htaccess) to the RewriteRule, and eliminate that first RewriteCond.

I thought I will need to use the REQUEST_URI only once in my htaccess file followed by these 250 RewriteRules. Am I wrong?

And also I was wondering maybe I'm just wasting time on trying to make the file shorter, Do I need to be worried about the size of that file if its going to contain around 250 RewriteRules?

[jdMorgan]

RewriteConds apply only to the single RewriteRule that they precede.

You can use a "quit" or "skip" function if necessary:

# Quit if NOT a request for Merchant2/merchant.mvc
RewriteRule !^Merchant2/merchant\.mvc$ - [L]

-or-

# Skip next 250 rules if NOT a request for Merchant2/merchant.mvc
RewriteRule !^Merchant2/merchant\.mvc$ - [S=250]

Or you can use a "RewriteCond multiplexer" rule:

RewriteCond dir/page1.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6116 [OR]
RewriteCond dir/page2.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6117 [OR]
RewriteCond dir/page3.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6118 [OR]
RewriteCond dir/page4.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6119 [OR]
RewriteCond dir2/page1.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6120 [OR]
RewriteCond dir2/page2.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6121
RewriteRule ^Merchant2/merchant\.mvc$ http://www.example.com/%1? [R=301,L]

Note that the replacement URL-path corresponding to each query string is written on the left side of each RewriteCond, matched into a variable (%1) on the right side, and back-referenced in the RewriteRule. The ">" character is meaningless to regular-expressions, and serves only to demarcate the replacement URL-path from the query string for the regex matching engine.

Jim

[g1smd]

RewriteCond affects only the next RewriteRule, not multiple rules.

You don't need the Cond if you can get the test pattern into the left-side of the Rule.

[asher02]

RewriteCond dir/page1.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6116 [OR]
RewriteCond dir/page2.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6117 [OR]
RewriteCond dir/page3.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6118 [OR]
RewriteCond dir/page4.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6119 [OR]
RewriteCond dir2/page1.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6120 [OR]
RewriteCond dir2/page2.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6121
RewriteRule ^Merchant2/merchant\.mvc$ http://www.example.com/%1? [R=301,L]

Jim, I tried figuring and implementing what you have suggested, and before I will experience brain damage, I came for your help again :)

Its not working for me and I cant understand whats the dir/page.htm>% before the {QUERY_STRING} is doing there.

The condition will not be met as the "dir/page.htm" belongs to the right side of the RewriteRule and will not show on the url that needs to be redirected.

I also thought thats its there only as a variable that is not checked as a condition but it seems that the RewriteCond is doing something with it.

This is what I have now:
The htaccess is in the Merchant2 dir.

RewriteCond premier/premier-6116.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6116 [OR]
RewriteCond premier/premier-6119.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6119 [OR]
RewriteCond premier/premier-6122.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6122 [OR]
RewriteCond premier/premier-6124.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-6124 [OR]
RewriteCond luxury/lux-3111.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-3111 [OR]
RewriteCond luxury/lux-3112.htm>%{QUERY_STRING} ^([^>]+)>Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-3112
RewriteRule ^Merchant2/merchant\.mvc$ http://www.example.com/%1? [R=301,L]

I'm lost:(

[jdMorgan]

I explained how it works in my post above. The replacement URL is matched into the "([^>]+)" in the RewriteCond pattern, and is referred to as "%1" in the right side of the RewriteRule.

If this code is in Merchant2/.htaccess, then remove the "Merchant2/" part of the URL-path from the RewriteRule pattern, as it won't be present:

RewriteRule ^merchant\.mvc$ http://www.example.com/%1? [R=301,L] 

Jim

[asher02]

Thank you Jim now it works like charm :)

I only need to verify a code I wrote about url that I can rewrite using a common RewriteRule. This will save me about 100 redirect using the above method.

For example in my url the only unique query string is the DSM-ffff
and the ffff has a unique pattern meaning if it starts for example with 6 then it belongs to a category f & the page I want to redirect it to will look like category-ffff.htm

So I wrote this code:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DSM-(6[^&]+)
RewriteRule ^merchant\.mvc$ http://www.example.com/category/category-%1\.htm? [R=301,L]

The code is working, do I need to fix anything?

Thanks

[jdMorgan]

The URL in the right side of a rewriterule is NOT a regular-expressions pattern. Therefore, it is not necessary to escape any characters except "$" and "%". You can delete the "\" before the "." in your URL:

RewriteRule ^merchant\.mvc$ http://www.example.com/category/category-%[b]1.h[/b]tm? [R=301,L]

Otherwise, looks OK to me, but test, test, test! :)

Jim