apache - Replace query string with file extension using htaccess Rule

Question

I have this link https://career.guru99.com/top-50-c-sharp-interview-questions-answers/?format=pdf

I want to redirect it to https://www.guru99.com/pdf/c-sharp-interview-questions.pdf

I created the following htaccess rule

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} format=pdf [NC]
RewriteRule ^c-sharp-interview-questions.html  /pdf/c-sharp-interview-questions.pdf? [R=301,L]

But the challenge is I have 100+ links and I will have to manually add so many entries in the htacess which also slow down the site. Is there some regular expression that can help with this?

I want /?format=pdf to be replaced with .pdf

Answer 1

1st Solution: Try following in case you are hitting http://localhost:80/top-50-c-sharp-interview-questions-answers/?format=pdf in your browser. Change [NC,L] TO [R=301,NC,L] in case you want to redirect your URL in browser.

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^career.guru99.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [NE,R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^format=(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^top-50-(.*)/?$ pdf/c-sharp-$1.%1 [NC,L]

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2nd solution: Could you please try following, written based on your shown samples(considering that you want to hit http://localhost:80/pdf/c-sharp-interview-questions.pdf in your browser).

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^career.guru99.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [NE,R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^(pdf)/([^.]*).(pdf)/?$ top-50-$1/?format=$2 [NC,L]

NOTE: Either use 1st OR use 2nd solution at a time please. Please make sure you clear your browser cache before testing your URLs.