Trouble with question mark in rewrite rule

Question

The url I am trying to rewrite looks like this.

root_domain/something/something-else/also-different-1030/?success=1289

With this rewrite rule I am trying to catch the url and direct it to the post with ID 1289.

function my_success_rewrite_rule() {
    add_rewrite_rule( '.+success=([0-9]+)$', 'index.php?p=$matches[1]', 'top' );    
}
add_action( 'init', 'my_success_rewrite_rule' );

Here is the regex I tested for the url.
https://regex101.com/r/nUENTl/1/

In the regex you can see that group 1 catches the post ID or $matches[1]. When I remove the ? from the url it works perfect and redirects any url with success=1289 at the end to the post with ID 1289.

However when I include the ? in the url it does not work, despite taking care of that in the regex by specifying . for any character and + as quanitfier for any number of occurrences and then success at the beginning of the regex before the capture group, the characters inside the ( ) followed by a $ to mark the end of the url string.

What does my rewrite rule need to look like to be able to keep the ? in the url and still rewrite the url to show post 1289 in this case? I am not sure how to escape or take care of the ?. Using .+\?success, so escaping the ? does not work.

I am also using Monkeyman Rewrite Analyzer and it shows me that the rewrite rule is being caught correctly.

I am also using flush_rewrite_rules( true ); in functions.php file to flush the rules each time I save, this to avoid having to manually update the permalinks settings page in the dashboard.

Also I am not adding a rewrite tag since p is a public query var, so no need to add that to WP since I want to get the post by ID, so I need to use p=$matches[1] (I think, pls correct me if this is wrong thinking, thx).

edit
To explain better why I think I need a ? in the url is this. The url is what the user is redirected to upon clicking a verification link. I could of course also omit the ? from the url the user is redirected to but I am not sure if that then is ok or the correct way of doing this.

if ( $verify === $verification ) {
    update_post_meta( $form_id, 'verification_id', 'verified', $verify );
    wp_safe_redirect( $url . '?success=' . $form_id );
}

So when the verification code is fine I update the post meta, then I take the original url the user was on when doing the verification and add the ?success=$form_id. I thought for WP to handle this fine and for me to also be able to use $_GET['success'] I have to have the ? in the url.

For example later on I am doing this to output information from the post I want.

function catch_success() {
    var_export( $_GET );
    if ( isset( $_GET['success'] ) ) {
        $post_id = $_GET['success'];
        $post = get_post( $post_id );
        var_export( $post );
        $user_reserved_seats = get_post_meta( $post_id, 'user_reserved_seats', true );
        var_export( $user_reserved_seats );
    }
}
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'catch_success' );

And initially I thought, to be able to use the catch_success function I need to have a ? in the url.

But instead of doing all that I should just omit the ? and redirect to the post I want to right after the verification link checks out?

Because as it stands now I think I have 2 redirects, 1 from the verification link and then from there to the success link and 2 from the success link to the post in question, 1289. I should just redirect to the post in question directly form the verification link, yes? Or I could omit the ? and still have the /success=1289 link redirected with a rewrite rule, to post 1289?

Bit of history, I asked this recently and is has to do with this in the sense that this is a follow up or the next step.

Answer 1

The root problem here is a misunderstanding of how URLs work. What you see in the browser is not a full URL, but something to make it easier to understand

For example, take this URL:

http://example.com/test/?foo=bar#bananas

Here we have instructions to:

• Via HTTP protocol aka http://
• contact the server at example.com aka https://example.com
• and do a GET HTTP request for /test/ aka https://example.com/test/
• With the parameters foo=bar aka https://example.com/test/?foo=bar

WP Rewrite rules operate on the request, aka the /test/, so you can never match ?foo=bar part of a URL. The GET parameter foo gets put inside the $_GET array. Note how the # component is never sent, this part of the address is entirely client side.

So in order for your test to work, you will need to do two things:

• Match on to the /something/something-else/also-different-1030/ part
• Then check $_GET['success'] to see if it has a valid value