htaccess RewriteRule keeps query string

Question

I've got a RewriteRule like this:

RewriteRule ^thesection$ /sections.php [L]
RewriteRule ^thesection/(.*)$ /sections.php?show=$1 [L]

so, if I enter domain.com/thesection -> it works perfect

but!, if I enter domain.com/thesection/hello it redirects to domain.com/thesection?show=hello

I don't know what I'm doing wrong and I've spent hours googling. Please help!

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Try this and let me know

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^thesection/?$ /sections.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^thesection/([a-z0-9\-_]+)/?$ /sections.php?show=$1 [L,QSA]

this will redirect domain.com/thesection/hello to sections.php?show=hello

the QSA flag means:

This flag forces the rewrite engine to append a query string part of the substitution string to the existing string, instead of replacing it. Use this when you want to add more data to the query string via a rewrite rule.

so you can add more parameters eg: http://www.domain.com/thesection/hello/?page=1 this will output:

Array (
 [show] => hello
 [page] => 1
)