How to redirect to .php file if exists and another if it doesn't

Question

I've only just written a forum in PHP. In my database, under my posts table and my categories table, I have a field called 'slug' for the url.

I have urls like /html for my HTML category and /html/test for a post named test under the HTML category.

But I also want urls like /signin which redirect to signin.php.

Is there a rewrite condition I can use that if I go to, for example /something, it will chech if something.php exists. If it does, it will show the content of something.php, else it will show category.php?cat_id=something?

Answer 1

Is there a rewrite condition I can use that if I go to, for example /something, it will chech if something.php exists. If it does, it will show the content of something.php, else it will show category.php?cat_id=something?

Try:

RewriteEngine On

# exclude legit requests
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

# check if requests is pointing to a php file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*?)/?$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%1.php -f
RewriteRule ^ /%1.php [L]

# otherwise, serve the category (also need to exclude legit requests)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /category.php?cat_id=$1 [L,QSA]