mod_rewrite with question marks and ampersands (with PHP)

Question

I have a PHP-based web app that I\'m trying to apply Apache\'s mod_rewrite to.

Original URLs are of the form:
http://example.com/index.php?page=home&x=5

Answer 1

Try this:.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php
RewriteRule ^/([a-z]+)(?:$|\?(?:.+)) /index.php?page=$1 [NC,L,B,QSA,NE]

B escapes the backreference (shouldn't be necessary since it is matching [a-z]+, but in case you want to extend it later, it might be useful).

EDIT: added RewriteCond. EDIT 2: QSA takes care of adding the ampersand.