multiple rewrites nginx

Question

I currently have my URL for my video page rewritten like so

rewrite ^/watch/(.*) /video.php?vid_id=$1 last;

This makes the URL look like

www.site.com/watch/123456

instead of

www.site.com/video.php?vid_id=123456

I want to be able to add the title in the URL like so without it affecting the location and current behavior of the URL above

www.site.com/watch/123456/vid-title

I would also however, like to be able to still use www.site.com/watch/123456 or www.site.com/watch/123456/ to get to my video and therefore be equivalent to my original URL (have flexibility in the URL). Does anyone know how to do this with NGINX? Do I need multiple rewrites? I have tried combinations of multiple rewrites with no success. I have seen it done on many sites but am not sure how they accomplished it.

Answer 1

Try this:

rewrite ^/watch/([^/]+)/?(?:vid-title)?$ /video.php?vid_id=$1 last;

• ([^/]+) matches any number of characters but not slash. You can use ([0-9]+) if you want.
• The question mask ? makes the preceding regex is optional.
• ?: tells the regex engine that this group should not create a backreference