htaccess issue

[webmmt]

First off - HELP!

I have looked high and low, up and down and still can't get this working. What I am trying to do it get a rewrite rule that handles up to 4 directories. Here is what I am looking for

domain.com/city/state/category/subcategory/

This redirects to index.php?city=$1&state=$2&cat=$3&subcat=$4

But I won't always have 4, I want to be able to redirect to:

/city/state/
/city/state/cat/
or /city/state/cat/subcat/

Here is my .htacess

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([A-Z,a-z,0-9,\_]*)/([A-Z,a-z,0-9,\_]*)/([A-Z,a-z,0-9,\_]*)/([A-Z,a-z,0-9,\_]*) /location.php?city=$1&state=$2&category=$3&subcat=$4

It works so long as I have the right number of slashes

For instance city/state/// works
or city/state/cat/

Is there some way to make this work without the slashes and be able the handle the 3 items above, or better yet, all four

Thanks in advance

[student101]

I'm not clued up on the .htaccess stuff, but this may help - url-rewriting

Cheers

[abduraooft]

Originally Posted by webmmt

For instance city/state/// works
or city/state/cat/

I'd use a different method, like

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?page=$1 [L]

The above rule redirects everything in the requrest_uri to the index.php page (where 'page' is just a dummy variable).

Then I use

PHP Code:

$req=split('/',$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); 


, which gives an array with all the items separated by / in the url. Thus I can interpret it as

PHP Code:

$city=req[1];
$state=req[2];
$cat=req[3];
$subcat=req[4]; 


Based on this I'd write the conditions/includes to serve the corresponding pages (and a custom 404 page also, if required).