Objective

I have to redirect any URL

www.example.com/product/cat/item/product-item
www.example.com/brand/cat/item/product-item
www.example.com/cat/item/product-item

to: www.example.com/product/item

item can have values like iphone-6-black-3g (having hyphen in them)

htaccess-code

I have made a test project and the following is in the htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /test/

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200 ### i have tested for ^.
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

RewriteRule ^(.+)/([^\-]+)-(.+)/?$  $2/$3.php?cat=$2&item=$3 [L,R=301]

If I redirect to test.php?cat=$2&item=$3 it is showing correct values in $2 and $3.

Problem

But if I redirect it to $2/$3.php weird things happen.

Since the new URL generated also satisfy the rule so I think a loop occurs that continue until no more match....

To break the loop I have added %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200, but it looks like it is not working.

I am getting crazy... the only solution coming to my head is change the item format like apple_iphone-t etc... Having first underscore and then hyphen. in this way no loop

Kindly suggest if we can solve it with hyphen pattern?

Solution

You could just prevent the loop by adding some conditions:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /test/

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)/([^\-]+)-(.+)/?$  $2/$3.php?cat=$2&item=$3 [L,R=301]

The reason why %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} isn't working is because you are using an external redirect. You're redirecting the browser so the browser sends a whole new request, so there's no internal redirecting for that condition to work.