apache htaccess - rewriting query string with no equal sign - apache

Question

This has been driving me insane. Any help appreciated!
I have a site that has a bunch of dynamic entries in the format:
http://example.com/foo?item-1
http://example.com/foo?item-2
etc.
Noting there is no equal sign / parameter post the ?, just a single string per the above.
I want to clean up the URL's so that we get to:
http://example.com/foo/item-1
So basically, I just want to remove that pesky question mark for foo pages and replace it with a slash. I haven't seen anyone address this case previously. I have tried the following with no success:
RewriteRule ^foo/([^/]*)\$ /foo?$1 [L]
There are two other rules in use already (both of which work). These remove the php from the end of the URL and the http from the start, per the below.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Thanks again in advance.

Answer 1

You have a problem with your regex. The \ before the $ symbol means you literally want to match a dollar sign there. Try without the \.
Also, you probably want that before your php rule but after the redirect. You want your external redirects before your internal rewrites:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^foo/([^/]*)$ /foo?$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]