.htaccess - Check if multiple files exists based on URL slug and rewrite accordingly?

Question

From the following url:

localhost/videos/the-best-games

and a directory named "categories" with various files in it located in the same directory as .htaccess :

./games.txt
./sports.txt
./football.txt

How to use the url slug "the-best-games" to check these filenames in "categories"

./categories/the.txt
./categories/best.txt
./categories/games.txt

And rewrite the url using the first matching filename:

localhost/games/videos/the-best-games

OR

localhost/games/videos/the-best

Maybe based on these previous questions:

• htaccess: Check if a file exists based on variables
• Using altered RewriteCond to check if file exists in multiple locations

Answer 1

This should work for you:

RewriteCond /path/to/categories/$1.txt -f
RewriteRule /videos/the-best-(.*)$ /$1/videos/the-best-$1 [R,L]

It will parse the rule and look for the-best-(whatever), take that value and examine the file system for the file at the absolute path to your categories. Then it will do the rewrite. If you want to remove the category from the end of the rewritten URL:

RewriteCond /path/to/categories/$1.txt -f
RewriteRule /videos/the-best-(.*)$ /$1/videos/the-best [R,L]