.htaccess - Check if multiple files exists based on URL slug and rewrite accordingly?

Question

From the following url:

localhost/videos/the-best-games

and a directory named "categories" with various files in it located in the same directory as .htaccess :

./games.txt
./sports.txt
./football.txt

How to use the url slug "the-best-games" to check these filenames in "categories"

./categories/the.txt
./categories/best.txt
./categories/games.txt

And rewrite the url using the first matching filename:

localhost/games/videos/the-best-games

OR

localhost/games/videos/the-best

Maybe based on these previous questions:

Can URL be of unlimited length like: `http://localhost/videos/the-best-games-on-earth` and you want to check for `on.php` and `earth.php` as well? — anubhava, Jan 13 '14 at 15:48

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 13 '14 at 16:16

This should work for you:

RewriteCond /path/to/categories/$1.txt -f
RewriteRule /videos/the-best-(.*)$ /$1/videos/the-best-$1 [R,L]

It will parse the rule and look for the-best-(whatever), take that value and examine the file system for the file at the absolute path to your categories. Then it will do the rewrite. If you want to remove the category from the end of the rewritten URL:

RewriteCond /path/to/categories/$1.txt -f
RewriteRule /videos/the-best-(.*)$ /$1/videos/the-best [R,L]

Thanks, this is a good start but what about checking if the.txt and best.txt exists? — RafaSashi, Jan 13 '14 at 16:40

.htaccess - Check if multiple files exists based on URL slug and rewrite accordingly?

1 Answers1