Having trouble with using add_rewrite_rule and pagination

Question

We have a section on the site, such as:

www.example.com/for-sale/category-name/

for-sale is a WP page, however category-name is dynamic and is what I wrote the below rewrite rule for.

add_rewrite_rule('for-sale\/([a-z-]+)\/?$', 'index.php?pagename=for-sale&search_slug=$matches[1]', 'top');

However, problems arise when the user needs to use the page query var, if I try going to:

www.example.com/for-sale/category-name/?page=2

it get's rewritten to:

www.example.com/for-sale/2/

So completely strips out the category slug.

Is there a way I can get this to work?

...or preferably I would like to be able to use something like this:

www.example.com/for-sale/category-name/2/

So I tried adding this additional rewrite rule:

add_rewrite_rule('for-sale\/([a-z-]+)\/([0-9])+\/?$', 'index.php?pagename=for-sale&search_slug=$matches[1]&page=$matches[2]', 'top');

..but again, it redirected back to:

www.example.com/for-sale/2/

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

Your rewrite rules are good, but the redirect happens because WordPress applies canonical redirect via its redirect_canonical() function which is hooked to template_redirect.

And you can cancel the redirect via the parse_request action, like so, where we check if the matched rewrite rule is the one you set when you call add_rewrite_rule() and if it is, then cancel the redirect by "unhooking" redirect_canonical() from the template_redirect action:

add_action( 'parse_request', function( $wp ){
    if ( 'for-sale\/([a-z-]+)\/([0-9])+\/?$' === $wp->matched_rule ) {
        remove_action( 'template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical' );
    }
} );