redirect a set of URLs to another URL with part of the original in the new URLs parameters

Question

Say I have a set of URLs

Http://www.example.com/some/thing/* Call the bit in the star, $id

And I want it to simply return the file at http://www.example.com/some/thing.html?src=$id without telling the client its a new URL.

After some research I have been told to set up a .htaccess file, however, Ubuntu suggests that is a bad idea and that I should do it through the main configuration. I dont mind doing it either way. However, its worth noting, that for so e reason I don't have a default.conf file in my /etc/apache2/sites-available

Answer 1

Enable .htaccess if it is not already enabled and then you can use this code in your DOCUMENT_ROOT/.htaccess file:

Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^some/thing/(.+)$ some/thing.html?src=$1 [L,NC,QSA]