Why does $_GET = index.php

Question

In my .htaccess file I have:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ index.php?ToDo=$1 [L,QSA]

When doing a print_r($_GET), it outputs

Array ( [ToDo] => index.php ) 

however, when I change the Rewrite Rule to

^([^/.]+)/?$ index.php?ToDo=$1 [L,QSA] 

print_r then outputs that $_GET is an empty array. Can someone explain to me why this occurs?

Answer 1

Let's take an example URI /abc:

Your first regex:

^([^/]+)/?$

Matches /abc and rewrites it to:

/index.php?ToDo=abc

Now mod_rewrite engine runs again and matches the regex ^([^/]+)/?$ again for URI /index.php and rewrites it to:

/index.php?ToDo=index.php

Your 2nd regex:

^([^/.]+)/?$

works fine because it doesn't match /index.php URI.

Best way to write this rule is like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ index.php?ToDo=$1 [L,QSA]

These two RewriteCond lines will prevent rewriting if request is for a valid file or directory.