Can't Figure Out How to Rewrite This

[sysdomatic]

Hey all

Trying to figure this out, just can't wrap my head around it.

I have a current URL structure that looks like this:

[mysite.com?my-articles.php?id=74...]

I have gone through and converted the titles of my articles to slugs, such as:

Title of Article

to

title-of-article

What I can't figure out is:

How can I automatically 301 redirect the current articles to a format like this:

[mysite.com...]

I know how to do it using the variables in the original URL - but I'm not sure how to include the "title-of-article" slug that I created.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

[jdMorgan]

You'll have to do this in your script -- or in *a* script that can access your database. Use the ID number to look up the 'slug' to put in the redirect URL.

Be sure that the script checks the original request as received from the browser to be sure the browser requested the old-style URL, before you redirect the request. This is the easiest way to find out if the requested URL was the old-style dynamic URL or if you're just looking at the rewritten filepath.

If that's not clear, then consider that before going to 'friendly' URLs, your URL-paths were identical to your filepaths. Now the URL is example.com/title-of-article-74/ and the filepath is /my-articles.php?id=74 -- They are 'associated' but not identical.

When a request for /title-of-article-74/ arrives at the server, you're currently rewriting that to the /my-articles.php?id=74 filepath, so this is the URL/file-path that your script will 'see'. You'll need to check to see if it 'sees' this dynamic URL/file-path because of your rewrite, or because that was the originally-requested URL. Only in the latter case can you redirect; If you redirect unconditionally, then you'll get an 'infinite' rewrite/redirect loop.

One way to solve this is for your rewrite rule to check the variable %{THE_REQUEST} using a RewriteCond and pass the client-requested URL to your script in the query string. For your example URLs, the two possibilites would then be /my-articles.php?id=74&client_URL=my-articles.php?id=74 (needs to be 301-redirected) or /my-articles.php?id=74&client_URL=title-of-article-74/ (must not be redirected).

And actually, if you modify your main script, then you could leave off the id name/value pair in your rewrite, because you can get that from the client-requested URL within the script; your original id= variable is now somewhat redundant. Otherwise, you'll need two scripts: One to call if the requested URL is the old style, and then your current script to call if the URL is the proper new-style URL.

Jim