.htaccess rules: slash at the end of the url messes up all the url

Question

I have the following rules in my .htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
    RewriteRule .* - [L]

    # single product page
    RewriteRule ^uleiuri/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)-([0-9]+)/?$ produs.php?id=$4 [L]

    # oils page by category and brand
    RewriteRule ^uleiuri/(.*)/(.*)/?$ uleiuri.php?cat=$1&brand=$2 [L]

    # oils page by category
    RewriteRule ^uleiuri/(.*)/?$ uleiuri.php?cat=$1 [L]
</IfModule>

What it does: website.com/uleiuri shows all the products, website.com/uleiuri/category-name show all the products for a certain category, website.com/uleiuri/category-name/brand-name, show all the products for a certain category and also for a certain brand, and finally website.com/uleiuri/category-name/brand-name/name-of-the-product-x is the product page.

As it is now it works, but if I add a / at the end of any of them, the rules fail and it show me all the products, so for example website.com/uleiuri/category-name/brand-name/ returns all the products.

I hope the problem is clear and I thank you for your help.

Answer 1

You should avoid matching with * and use + instead. What more, your rules are "greedy" and that's why to much is matched. You should replace (.*) with ([^/]+) which will match only strings to / character and at least one character.

When user enters adress: website.com/uleiuri/category-name/brand-name/ using your rules, cat variable is filled with category-name/brand-name and brand is an empty string, and that's probably why all the products are returned.

Your rules should look like those:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
    RewriteRule .* - [L]

    # single product page
    RewriteRule ^uleiuri/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)-([0-9]+)/?$ produs.php?id=$4 [L]

    # oils page by category and brand
    RewriteRule ^uleiuri/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ uleiuri.php?cat=$1&brand=$2 [L]

    # oils page by category
    RewriteRule ^uleiuri/([^/]+)/?$ uleiuri.php?cat=$1 [L]
</IfModule>