Correct .htaccess file for user-friendly URL - regex

Question

I supposed to have the following URLs to be converted to user-friendly format:
example.com/product/$numbers/$anychars => example.com/product.php?product_id=$numbers&name=$anychars
example.com/image/$numbers/$anychars/$number => example.com/image.php?image_id=$numbers&name=$anychars&no=$number
example.com/item/$numbers/$anychars => example.com/item.php?item_id=$numbers&name=$anychars
example.com/category/$anychars => example.com/category.php?name=$anychars
example.com/category/$anychars/$numbers => example.com/category.php?name=$anychars&page=$numbers
Trailing forward slash should be allowed and ignored by the web-server.
Using some guides from the Internet I did the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^product/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$ product.php?id=$1&name=$2 [QSA,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^image/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ image.php?item_id=$1&item_name=$2&no=$3 [QSA,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^item/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$ item.php?id=$1&name=$2 [QSA,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^category/([^/]+)/?$ category.php?cat=$1&page=0 [QSA,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^category/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ category.php?cat=$1&page=$2 [QSA,NC,L]
NC flag indicated to make it case insensitive.
L flag indicated to stop searching for match after one match was found (less bugs and faster URL handling)
Preliminary testing showed no errors.
But as regexps and mod_rewrite is not my best hobbies I'd like to ask you to check if I didn't make any errors. And if there's no - it could be a good pattern for a guys like me looking for a easy mod_rewrite solution.

Answer 1

There is one recommendation I would make. Put the rules in order from most specific match to most general match (in this case, switch the two category rules). By following this convention you ensure that a URL that may satisfy more than one rule is caught by the more specific rule.
In your specific case, you won't hit this problem yet, but as you grow your rules it will eventually bite you.
I haven't added QSA flags. I recommend that you create rules that would allow the user to see an entirely friendly URL, rather than a partly-friendly URL - to do this, ensure that you map additional parameters just like you have the ids and categories in your existing rules.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^product/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$ product.php?id=$1&name=$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^image/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ image.php?item_id=$1&item_name=$2&no=$3 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^item/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$ item.php?id=$1&name=$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^category/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ category.php?cat=$1&page=$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^category/([^/]+)/?$ category.php?cat=$1&page=0 [NC,L]