Apache mod_rewrite alias a path to another path - apache

Question

I have a weird rewriting problem due to some Drupal issue. I know not how to fix the Drupal issue, so this will be a temporary fix:
The path /the%20campanile/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/ (preferably with slash optional) should be an alias for /campanile/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/.
I've tried:
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^campy/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/$ campanile/$1/$2/
except that fails with 404 (presumably rewriting wrong). I've also tried with wildcards (*), but to no avail. I looked through about 16 posts on StackOverflow and a few other forums.
The entire .htaccess looks like this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^campy/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/$ campanile/$1/$2/
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^danger-\.palyvoice\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /category/blogs/danger-zone [L]
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Not sure why you're regular expression is ^campy/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/$ when you're trying to match something like /the%20campanile/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/. Groupings aside, the campy will never match the%20campanile.
You need to keep in mind that the URI is decoded before being processed through mod_rewrite, so you don't want to match against %20, but just the space:
RewriteRule ^/?the\ campanile/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ campanile/$1/$2/ [L]
You also want these rules before your index.php routing rule, since the routing rule will rewrite it before it gets to your other rules:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^/?the\ campanile/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ campanile/$1/$2/ [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^danger-\.palyvoice\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /category/blogs/danger-zone [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [QSA]