Mod_rewrite being difficult

[erik.hillis]

This ABSOLUTELY(!!) won't work:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^poll/21/? index.php?page=Poll&id=21 [L]

^The page loads with no content, no source, and gives no warning or error messages.

But when I change it to pollx/21/, it magically works?

There is no /poll/ folder... so that is not the problem.

 

[paitken]

What's the ? for anyway?

 

[qbert220]

Is there an earlier rewrite rule for "^poll" ? Perhaps in the apache httpd.conf file, or a higher level .htaccess?

The ? makes the preceeding character optional. i.e. the rule will match either "^poll/21/" or "^poll/21". This may not be exactly what you want, since it will also match any URL beginning with "poll/21" ("poll/212121", "poll/21abc" etc). You might want a "$" after the "?" to match end of line:

RewriteRule ^poll/21/?$ index.php?page=Poll&id=21 [L]

Eventually I assume you'll do pattern matching and use the match in the rewritten URL.