Redirect dynamic subdomain URL to its dynamic site URL

Question

I need to redirect users with old links to a subdomain to a new link that is dynamically generated using information from the link.

For example:

Old Link will look like this:

subdomain-2013.old-domain.com/data/process/aqs-2d3f4f5g-fgtgyy-uunb.xml

To construct the new link, I need the year provided in the subdomain and the file name. (The year will change, it is not constant).

New Link:

new-domain.com/2013/data/process/aqs-2d3f4f5g-fgtgyy-uunb.xml

How is this done? Is this something accomplished with .htaccess?

Answer 1

You can do it like this using mod_rewrite near the top of the root .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain-(\d{4})\.(example\.com) [NC]
RewriteRule ^data/process/([a-z0-9-]+\.xml)$ https://%2/%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Where %1 and %2 are backreferences to the preceding CondPattern and $1 is a backreference to the captured group in the RewriteRule pattern.

HOWEVER, I've just noticed you've tagged the question wpengine. The webhost "WP Engine" no longer supports .htaccess config files. Reference: https://wpengine.com/support/htaccess-deprecation/ - UPDATE: Although it seems this tag has since been removed from the question.

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UPDATE: If the target domain is different (a later change to the question) then this would need to be hardcoded in the substitution string, replacing the %2 backreference. For example:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain-(\d{4})\.old-domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^data/process/([a-z0-9-]+\.xml)$ https://new-domain.com/%1/$1 [R=301,L]

The example in the question is passing just the .xml filename to the target URL, it is not passing the preceding URL-path, which is what the rule above is doing.