add_rewrite_rule to pass entire path as a single parameter

Question

I want to rewrite an url and pass the whole path as a parameter. Something like:

www.example.com/csearch/foo1/bar1/foo2/foo3/bar4 => www.example.com/index.php?page_id=23&csearch=foo1/bar1/foo2/foo3/bar4

The script on page_id 23 will parse the content of csearch.

The path after /csearch/ varies in length. It can have 0 or 30 levels.

I have a working solution for only one level

www.example.com/csearch/foo1 => www.example.com/index.php?page_id=23&filter=foo1

works fine with the following added to functions.php

function create_new_url_querystring() {
    add_rewrite_rule('^csearch/([a-zA-Z-]*)/?$', 'index.php?page_id=23&filter=$matches[1]', 'top');
}
add_action('init', 'create_new_url_querystring');

I believe I need a new regex to match the entire path, not only the first level.

Any idea on how to solve my problem?

Thanks.

Answer 1

A quick tweak to your regular expression. You are currently capturing only letters before the first /

add_rewrite_rule('^csearch/(.*)$', 'index.php?page_id=23&filter=$matches[1]', 'top');

Note when parsing this that you may or may not have a trailing slash at the end of your value of filter.