htaccess redirect outcome not as expected - apache

Question

I hope someone can help me with the following problem.
I have a multiple language site with the language as a folder like
example.com/se/post
I want to get the language separated by domain like example.se.
So far no problem with a DNS alias and WPML plugin.
The problem I have is that I want to redirect example.com/se/post to example.se/post. I try to use this rule in the .HTACCESS file but it changes the URL to example.se/se with the /se that I do not need. I'm not very familiar with the rewrite engine in .HTACCESS file.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?nofairytales\.nl$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sv(/.*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.nofairytales.se%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

Answer 1

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?nofairytales\.nl$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sv(/.*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.se%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
This is close... you are capturing the URL-path (/post part) in the preceding condition but not using it in the substitution string. Instead, you are using REQUEST_URI which contains the full root-relative URL-path.
You are also matching sv in the URL-path, but redirecting to se in the TLD. The following should resolve the issue (with minimal changes):
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/se(/.*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.se%1 [L,R=301]
Where %1 is a backreference to the captured subpattern in the preceding condition (the /post part).
However, You don't need the second (or even the first) condition(s), as it can be all done in the RewriteRule directive. There wouldn't seem to be a need to check the requested hostname, since if the language subdirectory is in the URL-path then it would seem you should redirect anyway to remove it.
For example, the following should be sufficient to redirect a single language code:
# Language "se"
RewriteRule ^se(?:/(.*))?$ https://www.example.se/$1 [R=301,L]
The non-capturing group that contains the slash delimiter ensures that we always have a trailing slash on the target URL (after the hostname). The first rule above requires the user-agent to "correct" the redirect response when the slash after the hostname is omitted (which it does).
For multiple languages you can modify the same rule with regex alternation. For example:
# All supported languages
RewriteRule ^(se|uk|us|au|id)(?:/(.*))?$ https://www.example.$1/$2 [R=301,L]
This assumes all language codes map to a TLD using the same code. If not then you can implement a "mapping" (lang code -> TLD) in the rule itself or use a RewriteMap if you have access to the server config. This could also provide a "default" TLD.
You could be more generic and allow any two-character language code in the regex. eg. ^([a-z]{2})(?:/(.*))?$. And simply pass this through to the TLD. However, a request for an unknown language (eg. /xx/post) - which might have resulted from an error on your site - will now result in either a malformed redirect (since the domain won't resolve) or worse, a redirect to a competitor lying in wait. And this might go undetected unless you run an analysis of your redirects. So, being more restrictive with the regex/rule may be advisable.