Quick Mod-ReWrite Question

[DanielCoe]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me why on some of my hosts my dummy mod written urls stay in the url address bar, while on other hosts the hidden/long url is displayed in the address bar.

All .htaccess files are the same, for example:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^hello-(.*).htm /hello.php?id=$1 [R]

So on one host hello-123.htm will stay in the address bar once clicked on, while on others the hello.php?id=123 is displayed in the address bar.

If there something wrong with the way I am writing the htacess stuff? Or is it just different hosts install Apache modrewrite in differing ways?

Thanks

Daniel

[Rich]

The [R], which means force redirect, is what causes the hello-123.htm to be replaced with hello.php?id=123, so if you just want the former to stay in the address bar you don't want the [R].

Normally you would use [R] if you had moved a page to a new url and you wanted users to be redirected to the new page.

Where as you would use it without the [R] if you wanted the webserver to accept one url, rewrite it and pass it to different url internally, but send the output back as if it came from the original url (i.e when moving query strings into the main url)

As for why its working differently on different servers, I'm not sure if they all have [R] in the same places - I can't see that there is anyway to disable just internal or external redirects.

This post is probably not much use unless you spot a rogue [R].

[DanielCoe]

Thanks for your help.

Is there a good site where I can see a list of what all the [] words mean, like [Q],[L],[R] etc.

And don't say the Apache site.

Daniel

[Rich]

Not sure if you meant not the Apache site as in don't give an obvious answer or as in you had already looked there, but it is the best refference I've found. There isn't that much to mod_rewrite really.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Scroll down to the contents then click on RewriteRule then about two screens down is the definition of all the flags.

[DanielCoe]

Thanks mate,

Your a good help - as always!

It was just the [R] !!

Have you got any other major tips for me - I've got lots of time on my hands for listening! (or reading).

Daniel