Htaccess alias redirect fake multilanguage url

Question

I have a domain www.domain.com with this kind of url

www.domain.com/my-italian-page.html (already rewritten by others htaccess rules)

I'd like to create a fake multilanguage url like

www.domain.com/my-english-page.html

The user will see in the address bar the rewritter url www.domain.com/my-english-page.html but the content that I'd like to show is the original www.domain.com/my-italian-page.html .

I'm on a shared server so I can't use apache vhost rule so I have to find a solution via htaccess.

Someone could help me to find the right way?

Thanks

Do you want a static rewrite like always translate "la mia vacanza recente" (don't hit me I used google translate) into "my recent vacation" or do you want dynamic rewriting for multiple articles? — dualed, Aug 26 '12 at 12:39
To be more precise: is an ecommerce. So I have to recreate a rewrite foreach product url. — luigi, Aug 26 '12 at 12:57
Example I have in ITALIAN www.mydomain.com/burro.html My idea is to create a php script that will write into htaccess one single rule foreach product to get something like in fake ENGLISH www.mydomain.com/butter.html So if the user will visit www.mydomain.com/butter.html i'd like that url showed on address bar will be /butter.html but the content is from the original burro.html Obviously i will save both clean url in a database then i will call the php script to write the rule into .htaccess. — luigi, Aug 26 '12 at 13:06

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 26 '12 at 17:52

1

So you want english URLs pointing to italian content? Hope your php script that generates these rewrite rules does the translating. But you'd do this for each one of your pages:

RewriteRule ^/?english-page.html$ /italian-page.html [L]

for each one of your pages.

answered Aug 26 '12 at 17:52

Jon Lin

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Yes, the php script translate everything except url. I think that some other rule is causing problem. – luigi Aug 26 '12 at 18:25
My htaccess `Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews -Indexes RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /acquista/ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/acquista/(payment|admin|provider|partner)/ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(gif|jpe?g|png|js|css|swf|php|ico)$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l RewriteRule ^/?butter-of-cacao-biologic.html$ /Burro-di-cacao-biologico.html RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatcher.php [L] ` – luigi Aug 26 '12 at 18:29
@user1625783 you probably want to put that rule *right after* `RewriteBase /acquista/`, or better yet, in the htaccess file in your document root, since it's `www.domain.com/my-english-page.html` and not `www.domain.com/acquista/my-english-page.html` – Jon Lin Aug 26 '12 at 18:47

dualed · Answer 2 · 2019-06-22T09:18:07.513

Generally you want to keep the code executed in the web server as small as possible, so having a rewrite rule for each page is not usually a good idea. I suggest to implement this the way most CMS work when SEO URLs are enabled:

Rewrite any url (mydomain/anytext.html [actually you should not use the .html extension either]) to a script (eg. mydomain.tld/translate.php)
Use content of $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] (should contain anytext.html) to display the correct page
Set correct HTTP response code if page does not exist: http_response_code(...) (see end of this answer for a function on php5 below 5.4: PHP: How to send HTTP response code?)

Sample .htaccess (actually originally "stolen" and severely modified from a typo3 setup)

RewriteEngine On

# Uncomment and modify line below if your script is not in web-root
#RewriteBase / 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule (.*) translate.php$1 [L]

Very basic pseudo-code-like (not tested, there may be syntax errors) example:

<?php
// using a database? you have to escape the string
$db = setup_db();
$page = db->escape_string(basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO']));
$page = my_translate_query($page);

// no database? do something like this.
$trans = array( 'english' => 'italian', 'italian' => 'italian' );
$page = 'default-name-or-empty-string';
if(isset($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])) {
   if(isset($trans[basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])])) {
      $page = $trans[$trans[basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])]];
   }
   else {
      http_response_code(404);
      exit();
   }
}

// need to redirect to another script? use this (causes reload in browser)
header("Location: otherscript.php/$page");
// you could also include it (no reload), try something like this
$_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] = '/'.$page;
// you *may* have to modify other variables like $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']
// to point to the other script
include('otherscript.php');
?>

I saw in your answer that you have another script - dispatcher.php - which you seem reluctant to modify. I modified my response accordingly, but please keep in mind that by far the easiest way would be to just modify the existing script to handle any English paths itself.

Htaccess alias redirect fake multilanguage url

2 Answers2