.htaccess rewrite "/book.php?id=1234" to "/book/1234"

Question

This is what I have so far in my development environment:

php_value error_log log/php.log
php_value display_errors 1
php_value magic_quotes_gpc Off

RewriteEngine On

# remove slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

# file.php to /file
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(.+)\.php([#?][^\ ]*)?\ HTTP/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/ajax.php
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.php$ http://localhost/$1 [R=301,L]

# /file to file.php
RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)$ $1.php [L]

I've tried a lot of variants of this rule but I always get a 500 error:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /book.php?url=$1 [L]

And this is in my Apache's error.log:

[Fri Jul 27 19:56:51 2012] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Request exceeded the limit of 10 internal redirects due to probable configuration error. Use 'LimitInternalRecursion' to increase the limit if necessary. Use 'LogLevel debug' to get a backtrace.

What am I missing, why the redirect loop?

Answer 1

Your RewriteRule as written appears to be trying to do opposite of what your question headline is saying. You say that you want htaccess rewrite /book.php?id=1234 to /book/1234, but your RewriteRule:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /book.php?url=$1 [L]

Is adding a query string parameter.

The RewriteRule below will rewrite rewrite /book.php?id=1234 to /book/1234

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=([0-9]*)$
RewriteRule ^book\.php$ /book/%1? [L]

Also, if you really wish to go the other way, i.e. rewrite /book/1234 to /book.php?id=1234 the following should do that:

RewriteRule ^book/(.*)$ /book.php?id=$1 [L]