i make migration plugin from specific script to wordpress, but i have a problem on redirect old urls to new one

old urls is like book.php?view=12a34b56 and i want redirect it to book/12a34b56

i try to make it by add_rewrite_rule like this

init function >
add_rewrite_rule(
    '^book.php\?view=([^&]*)&?',
    'index.php?name=$matches[1]',
    'top'
);

but rewrite rule not detect query args i don't know why, so i'm changed the method to

query_vars function >
        array_push($vars, 'view');

pre_get_posts function >
        if (!is_admin() && is_main_query() && get_query_var('pagename') === 'book.php' && get_query_var('view') != '') {
            $query->set('name', get_query_var('view'));

            // after redirect to new url, view arg not removed
            // new url be like this book/12a34b56/?view=12a34b56
            // i try to remove view arg in url after set query but it's still not removed
            $query->set('view', false);
            set_query_var('view', false);
            unset($_GET['view']);
        }

this method work perefectly but i still have one problem like i say in code comments new url be like book/12a34b56/?view=12a34b56, how i can remove ?view=12a34b56 after set post name, or method to detect query args on add_rewrite_rule that will be great.

NOTE : i do not want edit .htaccess directly

i make migration plugin from specific script to wordpress, but i have a problem on redirect old urls to new one

old urls is like book.php?view=12a34b56 and i want redirect it to book/12a34b56

i try to make it by add_rewrite_rule like this

init function >
add_rewrite_rule(
    '^book.php\?view=([^&]*)&?',
    'index.php?name=$matches[1]',
    'top'
);

but rewrite rule not detect query args i don't know why, so i'm changed the method to

query_vars function >
        array_push($vars, 'view');

pre_get_posts function >
        if (!is_admin() && is_main_query() && get_query_var('pagename') === 'book.php' && get_query_var('view') != '') {
            $query->set('name', get_query_var('view'));

            // after redirect to new url, view arg not removed
            // new url be like this book/12a34b56/?view=12a34b56
            // i try to remove view arg in url after set query but it's still not removed
            $query->set('view', false);
            set_query_var('view', false);
            unset($_GET['view']);
        }

this method work perefectly but i still have one problem like i say in code comments new url be like book/12a34b56/?view=12a34b56, how i can remove ?view=12a34b56 after set post name, or method to detect query args on add_rewrite_rule that will be great.

NOTE : i do not want edit .htaccess directly

• wp-query
• url-rewriting
• query
• htaccess
• rewrite-rules

1 Answer 1

It doesn't work with add_rewrite_rule() because of the ?view= part in the URL (it's the first parameter for the function) — i.e. WordPress strips that query string part, hence it's not included when WordPress finds a matching rewrite rule.

how I can remove ?view=12a34b56 after set post name

You can't (not on the same page), because that is a query string in the request URL which PHP reads from upon loading the page, and the browser already "put" the URL in the address bar.

But because I believe you want a 301 (permanent) redirect whereby the URL in the browser's address bar changes, then you can easily achieve that redirect via the parse_request hook — you could also use the init hook, but with parse_request, WordPress already parses the request path (e.g. https://example/this-path/), so we can simply read from the parsed data, i.e. the $wp->request below.

So this should work for you, but make sure to remove that pre_get_posts code from your file:

add_action( 'parse_request', 'wpse_375940' );
function wpse_375940( $wp ) {
    if ( 'book.php' === $wp->request &&
        ! empty( $_GET['view'] )
    ) {
        $query = new WP_Query( [
            'name'   => $_GET['view'],
            'fields' => 'ids',
        ] );

        if ( ! empty( $query->posts ) &&
            $url = get_permalink( $query->posts[0] )
        ) {
            // Or use 302. It's up to you to decide.
            wp_redirect( $url, 301 );
            exit;
        }
    }
}