.htaccess - Trying to make a GET variable invisible in an URL but retain its usefulness using mod_write

Question

Good day all,

I am trying to master the ,magic of mod_rewrite and require some advice/help.

I am trying to turn an URL from:

http://www.domainname.com/preview/about/5

To this:

http://www.domainname.com/preview/about

The issue is, I still need to retain the [id] part of the original URL to be used as a GET later on and it not be visible.

The code I have thus far:

RewriteRule ^preview/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$         /preview/$1?id=$2 [R=301,QSA]
RewriteRule ^preview/([^/]+)/$                  ?mode=preview&id=$2 [L,QSA]

This manages to create an URL like: http://www.domainname.com/preview/about/?id=5 and passes the ID through, I just need the ?id=5 to be invisible in the URL.

Thank you in advance anyone who has a solution for this, much appreciated.

UPDATE:

I have managed to get the following code to work as expected alas this is using static values for ID all I now need for this to be complete is to get it working off dynamic values for ID.

RewriteRule ^preview/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$       /preview/$1      [R=301,QSA]
RewriteCond                                     %{QUERY_STRING} !.*id=5.*$
RewriteRule ^preview/([^/]+)/$                ?mode=preview&id=5 [L,QSA]

Answer 1

If you are not passing the "ID" as part of the query string (e.g. ?id=5) or part of the URI (e.g. /preview/about/5) then you need to pass it in the request body, in something like a POST request. Otherwise, you can't make it "invisible", because the webserver isn't going to see it. If the webserver doesn't see it as a request, there is nothing mod_rewrite can possibly do to extract it.

Assuming you can't setup your site so that requests get POSTed (sort of like how a form is submitted) everytime someone clicks on a link, you're best bet is probably having it look like the http://www.domainname.com/preview/about/5 form, or maybe http://www.domainname.com/preview/about-5?