I want to make a URL with different categorised variables. The first variable ({variable01}) is vegetables; the second ({variable02}) is fruits; the third ({variable03}) is trees, etc.
The URL thus looks like example.com/{variable01}-{variable02}-{variable03}-{variable04}-......
However, what if a variable has two or three words, and the separator is also a hyphen (e.g., brussels-sprouts)?
This would give example.com/brussels-sprouts-{variable02}-{variable03}-{variable04}-...... Another example might be the fruit green-apple.
How can this be possible?
There is no way to specify the boundaries of your variables anymore, so it's only possible if you know the exact amount of variables and only 1 of your variables may contain hyphens. You can create a regex for that:
First variable:
^([\w-]+)-(\w+)-(\w+)-(\w+)$
Second variable:
^(\w+)-([\w-]+)-(\w+)-(\w+)$
But: if you know that each variable can have at most 1 hyphen, you can also do this:
/var1-foo1-var2-foo2-var3-foo3-var4
RewriteRule ^(\w+(-\w+)?)-(\w+(-\w+)?)-(\w+(-\w+)?)-(\w+(-\w+)?)$ index.php?var1=$1&var2=$3&var3=$5&var4=$7 [L]
Which results in:
array (
'var1' => 'var1-foo1',
'var2' => 'var2-foo2',
'var3' => 'var3-foo3',
'var4' => 'var4',
)