Thread: Strange .htaccess Problem

I am working on a project that uses a URL shortener routine. I need to translate a URL that looks like a typical short URL to one that I can process. There is a base 36 hash code that gets translated into a reference number for a database lookup.

A typical shortened URL looks like this (spaces added so that it does not go live):

http :// domain. com/2afc3

I need to rewrite it into the following for processing:

http :// domain. com?hashURL=2afc3

It looks like it should be simple enough to rewrite the URL; however, it is not working. I am using $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] to monitor the querystring being passed to the script.



I tried this.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?hashURL=$1 [L]

It returns a querystring with "hashURL=index.php". I do not know where it is picking up index.php in the querystring.

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I tried this:

RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ index.php?hashURL=$1 [L]

This generates a 404.

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I tried adding a leading slash in the rewrite rule:

RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ index.php?hashURL=$1 [L]

This also generates a 404.

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If I add a subdirectory, such as http: // domain. com/a/2afc3 into the URL (which I do not want to do) and use the following rewrite code:

RewriteRule ^a/(.*)$ index.php?hashURL=$1 [L]

It work perfectly and returns a querystring with "hashURL=2afc3".



What am I missing? This looks like it should be simple, but I cannot seem to get the rewrite rule to read the 2afc3 hash code tacked onto the URL. I need to read the code without a reference character for a starting point. Is there any way to do that?

Try this:
RewriteRule ^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$ index.php?hashURL=$0 [L]

That works. Thanks.

I actually did try that previously, but I was using $1 for the variable and had the conditional wrapped in parentheses. For some reason that did not work.