Pretty Permalink for Search Queries Not Working

Question

As the title suggests I am trying to create pretty permalinks for search queries, but unfortunately I cant get them to work.

I am trying to achieve the folllowing:

website.com/search/something+searched

will go to the following

website.com/?s=something+searched

I have tried the following rewrite rule within the 'init' action.

add_rewrite_rule('^search/([^/]*)/$','?search=true&s=$matches[1]','top');

This doesn't work, although 'website.com/search/something' will go to the search page but not pass the var. As does the below code:

 
function search_rewrite( $wp_rewrite ) {
    $feed_rules = array(
        'search/(.+)'    =>  'index.php?s='. $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1)
    );
    $wp_rewrite->rules = $feed_rules + $wp_rewrite->rules;
}
// refresh/flush permalinks in the dashboard if this is changed in any way
add_filter( 'generate_rewrite_rules', 'search_rewrite' );

I believe I'm missing something on my search.php file but I'm not sure what.

Is there a reason for search queries / rewrites to behave differently to other rewrites?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Cheers

Noel

Answer 1

Schoolboy error!

I was using:

$_GET['s'];

as opposed to:

get_query_var('s');

Hence the empty search results.

Hope this might help somebody in the future!