Forum Moderators: phranque
Setup: wildcard subdomains have been set up in the virtualhost container and DNS zone. I have two optional name/value pairs that I want to write into the URL, with the first one (if present) mapping like so:
$name1.domain.co.uk = domain.co.uk/?$var1=$value1
and the second:
$name1.domain.co.uk/$name2 = domain.co.uk/?$var1=$value1&$var2=$value2
The second (virtual directory) rule only needs to kick in if the first (virtual subdomain) is present, since it's a hierarchy and there's the faint possibility that there might be duplicate values for $name2, although never within the same $name1. I apologise if this isn't very clear, I'm trying to abstract it to clear my head and make it easier for someone who isn't involved to understand it. If it helps, though, I can provide an applied example:
$var1 is county, so picking the last one I tested, we have:
bedfordshire.domain.co.uk should map to domain.co.uk/?county=001
$var2 is town/city, so:
bedfordshire.domain.co.uk/ampthill should map to domain.co.uk?county=001&town=0000000001
It's entirely possible that there might be a town called Ampthill in a different county as well, so ideally I want to check the existence of a county first and then check for each possible town in that county in the URL, but it shouldn't match a town where no county is specified. I can't set up a rewritemap to take care of all these relationships, but as long as I can get the patterns right I can generate the rules in .htaccess with PHP.
I can match the subdomain part with the following:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bedfordshire [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1?county=001 [NC,L]
That works fine, but adding any extra rule after that to check the town throws me into loops. If I do this:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/ampthill [NC]
RewriteRule ampthill ?town=0000000001 [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bedfordshire [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1?county=001 [NC,L]
It seems to still match the county, but not the town (I'm aware tht this reverses the GET variables, which I can deal with if necessary but it isn't ideal, because $town is dependent on $county, so it seems wrong to me to have the string in the format ?town=0000000001&county=001).
For the moment this only needs to work with index.php, although it would be nice if I could make it work with any possible "real" file or directory (possibly with other querystring variables) without screwing up the rewrite.
Is there anyone out there who can rescue me? I'm not fussy, I'll take help from anyone but the closer you are to South Wales (UK), the more likelihood I may eventually get to buy you due beer for your trouble.
I wouldn't do this trying to rewrite names to numbers. That's because I would not want to have hundreds of rules in the .htaccess file. I want one rule (maybe two) that covers everything all at once. Easier to set up and much less maintenance.
I would rewrite requests for county.example.com/ and county.example.com/town to the script without translating them to numbers. The script would then look at the database to get the data, based on extracting the words from the requested URL. I wouldn't use numbers at all.
Edit: I'm really not worried about the number of rules generated or with maintenance, as the rules will be generated programmatically, and if I set it up right I surmise that only the rules for each county will be parsed for a url containing that county.
In forms, you would type spaces, but the form script would then convert what was typed in, before applying it.
Whatever you do, do think about applying a 'did you mean...?' function that lists alternative locations when there are several with similar spelling, or for when no results were returned for what was actually input.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?ampthill [NC]
RewriteRule ampthill ?town=0000000001 [NC,QSA]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bedfordshire [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1?county=001 [NC,L,QSA]
I've tested it with and without trailing slash and extra GET variables and it seems to work, but it still has the "problem" - I don't know if anyone else will see it as such - of the first (required in the presence of a second) variable appearing in the URL after the (optional) second.
It also gives me a 500 error when a typo is made in the name of the town, where I'd ideally prefer it to fall back to the county if at all possible.
A rewrite should respond to a URL with, OR, without a trailing slash, but NOT both. To do so, creates duplicate content.
If you want both to work, set up a redirect to remove the trailing slash, before the rewrite kicks in. Force the correct domain in that same redirect at the same time too. That means both will still allow access to the content but only one will be 'seen' as being indexable by search engines.
state.domain.com/county/city/street
You will find that many of your visitors don't know what county the place they want is in. It is up to your site to prompt them, and give a list of choices.
Approach this from the point of view of the visitor that isn't exactly sure what they want. Cater for their needs and you have it licked.
state.domain.com/county/city/street
Once we got to that stage, we'd definitely need it to be bulletproof so we could deal with things like (dredging this out of memory slightly) the city of Charlotte, which has two Queens Roads that even intersect each other.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.co\.uk [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+)\.example\.co\.uk [NC]
RewriteCont %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /?county=%1&town=$1 [L]
Jim
Cheers for the reply, and the suggestion. Since you're a mod, any idea how we can clean up the thread? I went to edit an earlier post, and somehow (possibly because the other poster replied while I was editing) I ended up double-posting it, once with the edit and once without.
