Mod rewrite - possible

[vatik]

Suppose I have a subdomain 'http://sub.abc.org'

I would like to setup a rewrite that would satisfy the following.

1. User enters 'http://sub.abc.org/string'
2. The server will interpret this as 'http://sub.abc.org/index.php?query=string'
3. The url bar will display 'http://sub.abc.org/string'. The page will load based on the string submitted through the url.

http://del.icio.us does this in some manner. It has to be possible.

[Pethens]

In the root directory of sub.abc.org (probably /public_html/abc/sub/) create a file named .htaccess with the following content:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z]*)$ index.php?query=$1

The "[a-zA-Z]*" part rules out the slash char so you can still do sub.abc.org/sub/folders/here without clashing with the rewrite rule. You may want to change this depending on your application.

That should do it.

[vatik]

That worked like a champ. Thank you so much.

edit: i solved my other problem with php.

[vatik]

There is a problem with this method.

If the query contains any character not (a-z) or (A-Z), such as '?query=mr2' or '?query=dog+cat' the rewrite gets confused and results in a 404. help?

[Pethens]

In that case you just need a less restrictive rule, say

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)$ index.php?query=$1

or

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?query=$1

or

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_+]*)$ index.php?query=$1

It just depends on what kind of query strings you will be receiving

This guide is helpful:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html