can i type a clean url in drupal and be converted instead into a url with a query string?

Question

i'm creating a drupal site that should include a feature that will turn a clean url into a a url with a query string.

The way it should work would be:

1. user would type any clean url like www.example.com/hobbies/skiing in the url bar.
2. here is my problem:

inside the .htaccess i've put this line of code:

RewriteRule ^hobbies/([a-zA-Z0-9-]*) /index.php?hobbies=$1 [NC]

in the drupal, i've created a page with PHP Filter enabled, then typed in

<?PHP echo $_GET['hobbies']; ?>

the RewriteRule should turn www.example.com/hobbies/skiing into www.example.com/index.php?hobbies=skiing but i guess the code doesn't work as expected, or drupal has codes running that either skips the .htaccess command or something.

3.once the url has been translated into a dirty url, the page will display what the value of hobbies is, as the code works when you actually type www.example.com/index.php?hobbies=skiing directly into the url bar.

can you help me with this one?

Answer 1

There's a far easier way to do it, Drupal already keeps path parts aside for later which you can access using the arg() function:

if (arg(0) == 'hobbies' && arg(1)) {
  $hobby = arg(1);
}

If your path is an alias though arg() will return the original router path (node/1 etc.) so you'll have to be a bit more inventive:

$parts = explode('/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
if ($parts[1] == 'hobbies' && isset($parts[2])) {
  $hobby = $parts[2];
}

UPDATE

From your comments you'd be better off making a quick custom module for this:

// Implements hook_menu().
function mymodule_menu() {
  $items['hobbies/%'] = array(
    'title' => 'A title',
    'access arguments' => array('access content'),
    'page callback' => 'mymodule_page',
    'page arguments' => array(1)
  );

  return $items;
}

function mymodule_page($hobby) {
  return $hobby;
}

That will literally print out what ever is after hobbies/ in the content area of the page