How to url rewriting in php using htaccess?

Basics of url rewriting with examples for beginners

Introduction :- In this article we will explore some basics of url rewriting. First we need to know what is url rewriting?. Url rewriting means modify url?s appearance. rebuild an url to a new url or make a user or search engine friendly url. url rewrite depends on mod_rewrite must be enabled on Apache server. The main purpose of url rewrite to make clean url most of sites have dynamic variables in url like:-

This is not a readable url or not useful for search engine and also not define to page purpose so using url rewrite we can get a shorter and standard url like:- http://example.com/example/xx/yy
These type of url easier to read, remember and much clean. we can also do more effort to make it more clean.

Requirement:-

1. mod_rewrite must be enabled to Apache server.

2. Need to create a .htaccess file.

1. Remove .php extension from url :-

To remove .php extension like if you want change http://example.com/myfile.php to http://example.com/myfile add below code to .htaccess

if you want to give a specfic name to file like http://www.example.com/myfile.php to http://www.example.com/something

RewriteRule ? Tells Apache to applying single RewriteRule.
^something/?$ ? Regular expression or pattern. server will check this pattern on each request to redirect instead of substitution
myfile.php ? Substitution
[NC,L] ? Flags, refer Apache to apply a rule

Dynamic pattern :-

rewrite with specific name applied for a single url rewrite for multiple or dynamic url rewriting you need to use regular expressions in pattern like :- if you using query string in url like http://www.example.com/myfile.php?id=7 and want to change http://www.example.com/myfile/7 then use

Some of meta character used in regular expressions:-

. ? any character
* ? preceding start from zero
+ ? preceding start from one
{} ? min to max quantifier
? ? ungreedy modifier
^ ? must be start
$ ? end of string
[] ? class, apply more match
? ? range if used in class
() ? group
| ? or
\ ? escape character

Url rewrite Flags :-

Some of common used url rewrite flags

L ? Last, to stop processing no further rules will be processed

N ? Next, flag start ruleset again from the top

NC ? NOcase, means case-insensitive

R ? Redirect

QSA ? query string append

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