URL Rewriting including title

Question

Initially i succeed to rewrite the url using id

with the htaccess code:

RewriteRule ^link/([0-9]+)\\.html$ sub_index.php?link_id=$1          


        

Answer 1

First, your rewrite code is not correct:

RewriteRule ^link/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+)\.html$ sub_index.php?link_id=$1

Your link_id is $2, your title is $1. So you should use:

RewriteRule ^link/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+)\.html$ sub_index.php?link_id=$2

Then you should use a slug function for your title, so it's more url friendly. I use something like this:

function slug($string, $spaceRepl = "-") {
  // Replace "&" char with "and"
  $string = str_replace("&", "and", $string);

  // Delete any chars but letters, numbers, spaces and _, -
  $string = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]/", "", $string);

  // Optional: Make the string lowercase
  $string = strtolower($string);

  // Optional: Delete double spaces
  $string = preg_replace("/[ ]+/", " ", $string);

  // Replace spaces with replacement
  $string = str_replace(" ", $spaceRepl, $string);

  return $string;
}

slug("Trekking in Nepal") will be trekking-in-nepal, so your link will be:

/link/trekking-in-nepal/6.html

It should work then with your rewrite code.

Also, I like to rewrite my links like this:

/link/trekking-in-nepal-6.html

For this I use the following:

RewriteRule ^link/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)-([0-9]+)\.html$ sub_index.php?link_id=$2

Good luck!