I believe, you have to go back to my original code as it is:
list($path) = explode(‘?’, $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
As you changed it the path now actually goes to your $root variable.

what im hoping to have is the url rewritten to this automatically
wolfdogg.org/iditarod/idit_weather
without changing all my links in the source code

Rewriting incoming request URL and generating link URLs for rendering on web pages are two different things (yet related of course).
I believe, you have no automatic way if you have URLs hardcoded. You might filter HTML output to replace URLs on-fly but it’s too tricky and will drain system resources.
I suggest encapsulating URL generation into a function or better a class so that you can edit it from single place in future.

Learning MVC best practices also might help. I especially like how Zend Framework handles it as it uses the same class set for parsing incoming request URL as well as for generating URLs of links on pages.

wolfdogg.org/?section=iditarod&subject=idit_weather

i dont use the work index.php, but i want the code to be cross compatible for both /? and /index.php?

and i need to figure out a system whats the best way to utilize those vars. currently, ‘section’ is the first subdirectory and ‘subject’ is the page , in this case, wolfdogg.org/iditarod/idit_weather.php

any suggestions on how to modify the code to adapt?

curently using

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . index.php [L,QSA]

list($root,$path) = explode(‘?’, $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
//Explode path to directories and remove empty items:
$pathInfo = array();

foreach (explode(‘&’, $path) as $dir) {
if (!empty($dir)) {
$pathInfo[] = urldecode($dir);
}
}

looks like a good start
var dump looks like this

array(2) { [0]=> string(16) “section=iditarod” [1]=> string(20) “subject=idit_weather” }

what im hoping to have is the url rewritten to this automatically

wolfdogg.org/iditarod/idit_weather

without changing all my links in the source code

if(!empty($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'])){
list($root,$path) = explode(‘?’, $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

//rest of code here

have they changed the functionality of list()? because when i run it as suggested the script path is already stripped, and when the substr strips it even further, i end up with “ndex.php”

see var dumps for $path and $pathInfo below

string(10) “/index.php”
array(1) { [0]=> string(8) “ndex.php” }

Thanks for the example.

And product table is:
id, category_id, slug, label, description
1, 1, blender, Blender, This is cool blender
2, 1, water-filter, Water Filter, This is cool water filter
3, 2, router, D-Link DIR-300, This is not so cool network router
…

Now you get request for /products/network/router.html
which is rewritten to products.php?category=network&product=router

Now let’s query product data:

$rs = $db->query("
SELECT `product`.* FROM `product`
JOIN `category` ON `product`.`category_id` = `category`.`id`
WHERE `product`.`slug` = '{$db->real_escape_string($_GET['product'])}' AND `category->slug` = '{$db->real_escape_string($_GET['category'])}'");


The result set will contain single record for the product with ID 3.

Hope that helps.

I would like to keep the “fake URL” with out any numeric values.

I normally user rewrite mod with the unique numeric ID of the information I need, in order to query the mysql database.
With your example there is no numeric ID.
Now I’m confused
There is where my questions start.

Imagine I have a product
products.php?category=network&product=1
products.php?category=network&product=2

How can I make
/products/network/router.html open products.php?category=network&product=1
and
/products/network/cable.html open products.php?category=network&product=2

Thanks in advance