mod_rewrite query strings returning 404

Question

I have a custom URL like this:

website.com/show/?id=9999&n=page-name

I'm trying to come up with a rewrite rule to convert it to:

website.com/show/9999/page-name/

Note that this is a WordPress site and /show/ is WP page name.

Here's the rules I'm using in .htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    Options -MultiViews
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^show/(.*)$ /show/?id=$1 [R=301,NC,QSA]
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

This is working; it rewrites website.com/show/?id=9999 to website.com/show/9999/.

Then I modified the rule for the second query string:

RewriteRule ^show/(.*)/(.*)$ /show/?id=$1&n=$2 [R=301,NC,QSA]

But now website.com/show/9999/page-name/ returns a 404 error. It works if I go to: website.com/show/9999/?n=page-name.

What am I doing wrong?

Update

The 404 problem is now solved.

However, now I need to redirect the old query string URL:

website.com/show/?id=9999&n=page-name

to the new SEO friendly URL:

website.com/show/9999/page-name

How do I setup that redirect?

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:24:41Z

1

Try this:

Options +FollowSymLinks

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteBase /

    RewriteRule ^show/(\d+)/?([^/]*)/?$ /show/?id=$1&n=$2 [L,NC,QSA]

    # Wordpress defaults:
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
## Results
# show/9999            => show/?id=9999&n=
# show/9999/           => show/?id=9999&n=
# show/9999/page-name  => show/?id=9999&n=page-name
# show/9999/page-name/ => show/?id=9999&n=page-name

As you see, when page-name is not available, there will be an empty n query string parameter. In your PHP script, instead of checking for the parameter presence using isset(), try using empty().

One last note; The above rules do not redirect the request, it maps the request under the hood, so that the URL stays clean. If you need a redirect, just add a R flag.

404

Even if you remove your custom rewrite rules, you'll get a 404 from WordPress. That's because, as you said, the rewrite target (/show) is a WordPress page and ultimately get mapped to the index.php file. Then, WordPress checks its database to see if it can find a page with that path or throws a 404 if it can't. Obviously, the latter is your case.

Update

Regarding your recent update; To redirect the old URL to the new one, you need some rewrite rules along the lines of:

Options +FollowSymLinks

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteBase /

    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=(\d+)(&n=)?(.*)$
    RewriteRule ^show/?$ /show/%1/%3 [R=301,QSD,L]

    # Wordpress default rules:
    # ...
</IfModule>
## Results
# show?id=9999              => show/9999
# show?id=9999&n=page-name  => show/9999/page-name
# show/?id=9999&n=page-name => show/9999/page-name

Don't use [R=301] until you're 100% sure that everything's working fine, as it's aggressively get cached by the browser.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:24

CommunityBot

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answered Jan 4, 2017 at 12:20

sepehr

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6 Comments

Bryan Over a year ago

This still returns a 404 error for website.com/show/9999/page-name. However I can access the page from website.com/show/?id=9999&n=page-name

sepehr Over a year ago

I'm pretty sure that even if you remove your URL rewriting rules, it will still return a 404 error. So, the 404 has nothing to do with the rewrite process. That's because you're relying on a WordPress page for rewrite target. WP checks its database to see if the page exists and throws a 404 because it doesn't. You can put a PHP file there and avoid WP completely if that's possible.

Bryan Over a year ago

But /show/9999/ isn't an existing page either, just like /show/9999/page-name/. So why does the former work and not the latter? If /show/9999/page-name is remapped to /show/?id=9999&n=page-name and I can verify that URL is accessible, then why isn't it working?

Bryan Over a year ago

I tried creating a show directory and put index.php file in there, but I still get a 404 when visiting /show/9999/page-name

Bryan Over a year ago

I put that rewrite rule in htaccess, but it threw a 500 internal server error. I came up with one that worked, see my answer. Thanks very much for your help!

|

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

1

I think I figured it out... almost.

@sepehr is correct that WordPress is checking, not finding the page, and throwing a 404. So I needed to use WordPress' own rewrite engine to define the rewrite rules so it recognizes what I'm doing.

So I added this to my WordPress theme's functions.php file:

add_action( 'init', 'init_custom_rewrite' );

function init_custom_rewrite() {
    add_rewrite_rule( 
        '^show/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/?',        
        'index.php?page_id=2382&id=$matches[1]&n=$matches[2]',        
        'top' 
    );
}

add_filter('query_vars', 'my_query_vars', 10, 1);

function my_query_vars($vars) {
    $vars[] = 'id';
    $vars[] = 'n';
    return $vars;
}

Now the URL website.com/show/9999/page-name works correctly, not throwing a 404.

_{However, now I need to redirect the old query string URL to this new one. See my updated question.}

Update

Here's the rewrite rule to redirect the old query string URLs to the new SEO friendly URLs:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=([^/]*)&n=([^/]*)$ 
RewriteRule ^show/?$ /show\/%1\/%2\/? [R=301,L]

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Jan 5, 2017 at 3:12

Bryan

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2 Comments

sepehr Over a year ago

Great, well done! I'll update my answer to provide a new rule set to rewrite the old URL to the new one.

sepehr Over a year ago

Well done. Just a few notes; You don't need those [^/] groups when matching against the querystring as it won't include one ever. Also, escaping / characters are not needed on the substitution argument of the RewriteRule.

Ashish Patel · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-04 05:59:22Z

0

Please check below rule in to your .htaccess.

RewriteRule ^show/(.+)/(.+)$ show/?id=$1&n=$2 [L,QSA]

answered Jan 4, 2017 at 5:59

Ashish Patel

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1 Comment

Bryan Over a year ago

That still returns a 404 error for website.com/show/9999/page-name/. It also breaks my PHP script $_GET[id], so website.com/show/9999/ doesn't even work.

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