Why isn't my rewrite rule working when there is no second parameter?

Question

Here is my rewrite rule code:

add_rewrite_rule('tides/([^/]+)/([^/]*)', 'index.php?page_id=4348&location=$matches[1]&month=$matches[2]', 'top');
add_rewrite_tag('%location%', '([^&]+)');
add_rewrite_tag('%month%', '([^&]*)');

This works great for the following URL:

/tides/mylocation/mymonth/

but 404's on the following:

/tides/mylocation/

I'm flushing the rewrite rules every time I change the code. I tried changing * to + but no help there.

Any ideas?

Edit:

Some answers were suggesting adding another rewrite rule so I added:

add_rewrite_rule('tides/([^/]+)/$', 'index.php?page_id=4348&location=$matches[1]', 'top');

before my other rule, but still no luck.

Answer 1

Your regular expression is requiring the last slash be present which it will not be by default. So the path tides/mylocation/ is shortened to tides/mylocation and then tested. Instead, wrap the last part in an optional group using the ? and update the match number.

add_rewrite_rule('tides/([^/]+)(/([^/]+))?', 'index.php?page_id=4348&location=$matches[1]&month=$matches[3]', 'top');

Answer 2

Your second example URL doesn't match the pattern you defined in your rewrite rule. You need to add another rule to match URLs with just a single path element.

Answer 3

Your initial tides rewrite rule is looking for two parameters. If you want it to accept different combinations of parameters, you need to specify those rules.

For example, these are two rules from the base Wordpress install:

search/(.+)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ => index.php?s=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2] search/(.+)/?$ => index.php?s=$matches[1]