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PHP Enhancing a Simple PHP Application Cleaning URLs with Rewrite Rules Adding A Trailing Slash

Chris Collier
Chris Collier
17,774 Points
Posted by Chris Collier
Chris Collier
17,774 Points

Why does this rewrite rule work (leading slash)?

Hi, I had to go to an earlier forum response to pass this objective. I know how to pass it now, but not why this works. Here's the question:

In an earlier code challenge, we wrote a rewrite rule so that the web page http://localhost/flavors/ executed the code atall_flavors.php. Unfortunately, this only works if the web address includes the trailing slash. If someone visitshttp://localhost/flavors, they will see a 404: Page Not Found error. We'll need another rewrite rule to redirect from /flavorsto /flavors/. Add a new line to the htaccess file below to accomplish this.

This is what we're given to start:

RewriteEngine  On
RewriteRule ^flavors/$ /all_flavors.php

I would think that the answer would be:

RewriteRule ^/flavors$ /flavors/ [R=301]

But it turns out that the answer is:

RewriteRule ^flavors$ /flavors/ [R=301]

The difference there is that my proposed rewrite rules has a leading / in the first part. Why is this not correct? Why is it that it works if we search for the term without a slash and then replace it with a term with a slash? Wouldn't that cause a double-slash to be sent to the browser? Thanks in advance.

1 Answer

Glen Burnett
Glen Burnett
Courses Plus Student 27,349 Points

Hi Chris, great to see you at the Treehouse Forums.

Mmm, excellent question. I believe that little ^ symbol plays a role as announcing that you are now starting the beginning of a string.

See, when you write some of this stuff, if it's not escaped properly, it can be interpreted a number of ways.

An example:

Lets say you want to set a RewriteRule to match rss.xml

 RewriteRule    ^rss.xml$    rss.php    [NC,L]

Well, thats fine, it will match rss.xml. But it will also match rss1xm "and rss-xml

To fix this, we escape the string. And because you announce it AS a string by using that little ^ bit at the beginning, it knows that what you are able to declare is a string TO escape bits from it. Like so:

 RewriteRule    ^rss\.xml$    rss.php    [NC,L]

Here it goes ok, I know this is a string, you said ^ and I can see you are wanting to escape the dot with a backslash. So I now know to include it in and only match rss.xml, not rss.xml and rss1xm "and rss-xml

Bear in mind, this only is useable for the pattern. Not the substitution

^rss.xml$ is the pattern rss.php is the substitution

There are many other character symbols that can be used for the pattern you want it to examine, ^ is just one of them

. (any character)
* (zero of more of the preceding)
+ (one or more of the preceding)
{} (minimum to maximum quantifier)
? (ungreedy modifier)
! (at start of string means "negative pattern")
^ (start of string, or "negative" if at the start of a range)
$ (end of string)
[] (match any of contents)
- (range if used between square brackets)
() (group, back referenced group)
| (alternative, or)
\ (the escape character itself)

So in your instance, you are asking it to match a string not necessarily it's directory division with a forward slash.

^ is the start of your string, you want to search the word itself only, you tell it that the string ends with a $ and it is with your substitution section where you are specifying the url to go to.

I hope this sheds some light on the subject

Happy coding!