How to hide the URL change when using apache rewrite?

Question

How do I hide the URL change when using an apache rewrite? I have searched for hours on this issue and have decided to come here to find out the answer. So any help/clues would be greatly appreciated!

Right now I am using:

RewriteRule ^/Page/(.*)$ http://domain.com/page.cfm?pagevar=$1 [NC,L]

The problem with that is, when you go navigate to http://domain.com/Page/abc123 it works. BUT, it changes the browser url to http://domain.com/page.cfm?pagevar=abc123,

I want it to perform that same action, but show http://domain.com/Page/abc123 as the url.

Please, any insight on this would be very appreciated! Thanks again.

Answer 1

First rule will redirect your ugly URL to the pretty URL format.

Second rule will internally redirect it back for the user will not see the ugly URL.

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# Redirect /page.cfm?pagevar=abc123 to /Page/abc123
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s/+page\.cfm\?pagevar=([^&\s]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /Page/%1? [R=301,L]

# Internally forward /Page/abc123 to /page.cfm?pagevar=abc123
RewriteRule ^Page/(.*)/?$ /page.cfm?pagevar=$1 [QSA,NC,L]

The above rules are to be used on .htaccess files and assumes page.cfm is on the root of your domain folder along with the .htaccess file.

Like your examples proposes.