Apache mod_rewrite subdomain and URL arguments

Question

I am trying to write an Apache mod_rewrite that can take in information from the subdomain, and after the domain and pass it as a couple of variables to a PHP script.

Here is what I have so far, with this I can either get the subdomain, or the URL arguments.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^./]+)\.domain\.com/([a-zA-Z0-9/-]+)$
RewriteCond %1 !=www
RewriteRule ^ redirect.php?subdomain=%1&args=$2

RewriteRule ^/?([a-zA-Z0-9/-]+)$ redirect.php?args=$1 [L]

mod_rewrite is enabled, and we are using a wildcard A-record to point all traffic to this server *.domain.com

Additionally, I do apologize if this is posted elsewhere, I have been trying to solve this off and on for the last month and have not figured it out, or found the answer posted anywhere.

Answer 1

As Shane Madden already mentioned, the first RewriteCond doesn't look like it will match anything. The reason is twofold: firstly that the first . is not escaped and secondly that the %{HTTP_HOST} variable does not contain any slashes so the whole section after domain\.com will not match anything.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^./]+)\.domain\.com/([a-zA-Z0-9/-]+)$

I've never used %1 on the left side of a RewriteCond before. Unless you're sure that this works, if you have more problems try removing this line to eliminate it as a possible cause. There also shouldn't be an = sign in there. Simply !www is what you want here. If you do have problems with this line, change it to use the %{HTTP_HOST} variable instead of %1.

RewriteCond %1 !=www

The $2 in the substitution of this RewriteRule has no matching set of brackets in the pattern, hence it will be empty. You will probably want to add a larger pattern to this one. If it only has one matching set of brackets, $1 will be what you want, even if you already have %1 in the substitution. I suspect you will also want to make this /redirect.php... if you're doing this in the configuration files and not in a .htaccess.

RewriteRule ^ redirect.php?subdomain=%1&args=$2

Also, I might add that matching simply ^ is prone to creating loops. Be careful with that one.