.htaccess & PHP — Allow // in GET data

Question

If you're going to -1 this question, tell me how I can improve it, rather than just leaving it.

This is a dup with a few edits

I'm making an open-source piece of software, but my .htaccess needs a little tuning.

How do I allow a URL such as www.mydomain.net/forum/method/user//abc and keep the // when grabbing it in my PHP code?

I've looked here: allow slash in url .htaccess

But that was no help.

Here's what I have:

.htaccess

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?/=$1 [NC,QSA,L,NE]

And:

geturl.php

$url = (isset($_GET['/']) ? $_GET['/'] : null);
die($url);

Output: account/signup/2/sskssks

URL: account/signup/2//sskssks

Expected output: account/signup/2//sskssks

Basically, something is removing/trimming the // and setting it to /.

I think empty parts in URLs are resolved leaving just one `/`. Why do you need `//`? — Halcyon, May 19 '14 at 15:20
Do you have any other RewriteRule in this .htaccess? What happens if you omit `NE` from the rewrite flags? — Michael Berkowski, May 19 '14 at 15:20
`$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]` or e.g. `REDIRECT_URL` will retain the original and unnormalized path. To avert downvotes, try not to repost without further research. — mario, May 19 '14 at 15:26
Right - it's preserved in `$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']` if you just rewrite all requests to index.php with no params (except requests to index.php) — Michael Berkowski, May 19 '14 at 15:31
Guys, is there a way I could remove all *directories* from $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] in php and get the rest? This would be awesome. — user3650841, May 19 '14 at 17:08

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 07 '21 at 06:01

Section 3 of RFC 3986 covers the generic syntax of path components in a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

  path          = path-abempty    ; begins with "/" or is empty
                / path-absolute   ; begins with "/" but not "//"
                / path-noscheme   ; begins with a non-colon segment
                / path-rootless   ; begins with a segment
                / path-empty      ; zero characters

  path-abempty  = *( "/" segment )
  path-absolute = "/" [ segment-nz *( "/" segment ) ]
  path-noscheme = segment-nz-nc *( "/" segment )
  path-rootless = segment-nz *( "/" segment )
  path-empty    = 0<pchar>
  segment       = *pchar
  segment-nz    = 1*pchar
  segment-nz-nc = 1*( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / "@" )
                ; non-zero-length segment without any colon ":"

  pchar         = unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" / "@"

The line defining segment-nz indicates that individual segments in a path, i.e. /aaa/bbb/ccc ('aaa', 'bbb', and 'ccc' are each segments), cannot be empty. They must contain at least one(1) pchar. There are special cases for beginning an absolute path that is rooted and empty (/) and simply empty, and a couple others that are rarely encountered when discussing Web URLs.

Your URI path is being normalized, stripping the extra / from your path. If that slash is important, you will need to send it as data by using percent encoding.

I'm not good at htaccess, so what modifications would I need? — user3650841, May 19 '14 at 15:38

.htaccess & PHP — Allow // in GET data

1 Answers1