Pretty URL's for web application

Question

I'm aware that there are a hundred articles, tutorials and manuals on Mod Rewrite but i tend to learn better by examples, so all i'm asking is for a quick pretty url conversion and i'll be on my way (so i can dissect exactly what its doing, so i can apply it to others)

I have this URL: http://www.example.com/single.php?id=1

Now it would be great if it could follow the same convention as Stack Overflow where the id=1 is the actual title of the page.

I have the title in a PHP variable if thats any help?

I would be grateful if someone could turn the above into: http://www.example.com/single/here-is-my-cool-title (where the last bit is dynamic, depending on a PHP variable)

Is that possible?

Them articles, tutorials and manuals contains plenty of examples, you know — Your Common Sense
– Your Common Sense, Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 12:40
As you may notice, StackOverflow contains not single keyword in the url, but an actual question id. So, what url you actually want? — Your Common Sense
– Your Common Sense, Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 12:43
ok ditch the single, just the id number/title would be great! — benhowdle89
– benhowdle89, Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 12:47

Adam Hopkinson · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-28 15:09:53Z

SO actually has the post ID and the title in the url, but they'll only use the post ID. The title isn't very suitable, as there may be duplicate posts (same title, different id), title changes, etc. For the url of this question:

/questions/5142095/pretty-urls-for-web-application

To resolve to this:

/single.php?id=5142095

The rewrite rule will be:

RewriteRule ^questions/([0-9]*)/(.*)$ /single.php?id=$1

What this looks for is the start of the uri (after the domain) ^, the word questions, any length of numbers `[0

This looks for:

^ the start of the URI
the word questions
a slash /
a variable length of numbers [0-9]* (such as 1, 123, 1234 etc)
a slash /
any length of any character .* (ie the question title)
$ the end of the URI

When the character match (such as [0-9]* or .*) is in brackets, mod_rewrite puts the match result into a numbered dollar variable. In the rule above, [0-9]* matches any number (and any length of numbers) and puts it into $1. The second match .* matches any length of any character, and puts the match into $2.

Your application will receive the URI on the right side of the rule, with the dollar variables replaced with the matches.

Thanks, this is a great explanation...really helped me wrap my head around it!
Great! I found it a bit of a steep curve (regex? really?) but once you get the hang of it, it's mega powerful!

Ian Wood · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-28 12:44:31Z

You are right about the number of articles on mod rewrite - personally I don't like having to add extra rules all the time and then worry if that rule is going to be caught...

To that end I prefer simply passing the lot through to the root index file and then allow server side to decide what to do with it.

Have a look at this.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:16:16Z

Unlike others, this answer will give you solution not for the particular question but for the whole problem. Just because it's based on real life experience, not bare theory.

This answer contains everything you need, including SEO-friendly redirect from old-style urls and code for altering old scripts to make them run as usual.

The only thing left for you to do is to alter links generation code on your site. Not a big deal I hope.

Eduard7 · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-28 12:45:50Z

You have to use Apache's mod-rewrite, here's an example:

 <Directory /www/yoursite/> RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^single/?(.*)?/?$ article.php?id=$1 [L] </Directory>

Edit: it's a good idea to add integer identifier to your rewrite, like:

 RewriteRule ^single/([0-9]+)/?(.*)?/?$ article.php?id=$1&text=$2 [L]

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