PHP Rewrite Rules

Solution 1:

Create a file called .htaccess in the root of your website and put this in it.

RewriteEngine on 
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase / 

RewriteRule ^(.*) search.php?search=$1 [R]

Should do the trick.

I would suggest however that you make it a bit more specific, so maybe require the user of a search directory in your url. eg instead of mysite.com/IPhone use mysite.com/search/IPhone which would work like

RewriteEngine on 
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase / 

RewriteRule ^search/(.*) search.php?search=$1 [R]

This makes it easier to have normal pages that arnt redirected, such as about us or a basic homepage.

As Chris says, this is not PHP but Apache that does this, and whether it works can depend on your hosting setup.

Solution 2:

You need to specify something like this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule /(.*) /search.php?search=$1

Check also:

• mod_rewrite: A Beginner's Guide to URL Rewriting
• Module mod_rewrite, URL Rewriting Engine

Solution 3:

Rewrite rules aren't part of PHP as far as I'm aware, but Apache (specifically mod_rewrite) or whatever server you're using. For Apache, you need on the server to have a file called .htaccess, and in it put something like:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(\w+)/?$ /index.php?search=$1

^(\w+)/?$ is a regular expression - it matches any word of 1 or more characters, followed by a / maybe. So it changes site.com/iPhone into site.com/index.php?search=iPhone. Sound about right?