Rewrite rule in htaccess for nice links and I need advice - regex

Question

I'm trying to make nice links in my apps.
I decided to rewrite links that look like these:
1. http://example.cz/get1/get2/get3
2. http://example.cz
Into these (I have php appliactions only):
1. http://example.cz/index.php?path=get1+get2+get3
2. http://example.cz/index.php?path=
I'm removing www before links.
I keep failing to rewrite it into .htaccess.
I'm also looking for advice if the primary idea of rewriting get params into path=get1+get2+get3 is good? Right now I can see that link like this http://www.example.cz/you+me/ could possibly fail somewhere. Do you have any better solution?
So question is: How to rewrite it into .htaccess and how to solve possible problems with link that contains '+'
EDIT:
I improved my skills a little and I did this:
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$
RewriteRule (.*) http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^\/index.php(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.+) /index.php?path=/$1 [R=301,L] # 301 is here so I can see how does it work
# everything above works well (as I want)
# link now look like this one:
# http://example.net/index.php?path=/get1/get2/get3
# Now I was looking for universal rule that will rewrite my get params...
# First I did this:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /([^/]+)
RewriteCond %1 !index.php(.*)
RewriteRule /([^/]+) $1+ [R=301,L]
# If any part of request uri is string that matches pattern /([^/]+)
# And if ([^/]+) doesn't match index.php(.*)
# then rewrite every /([^/]+) into $1+
# Now I see that it is incorrect, but I wasn't able to fix it
# So then I did different rule
RewriteRule ^([^=]+=[^\/]*)\/([^\/]+)(.*)$ $1$2+$3 [R=301,L]
# start of string
# first var is: one or more chars except =, =, zero or more chars except /
# /
# second var is: one or more chars except /
# third var is: zero or more chars
# end of string
I think second idea was much more better, but it doesn't work too. Please help me to fix it.

Answer 1

You can do this with the Apache module mod_rewrite. Chances are you probably already have it installed. Try this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ index.php?path=$1+$2+$3 [L]
This regex assumes the URL will always contain three groups of text between slashes. You can tweak it as needed.
Also note that Apache never sees the URL hash, so you won't be able to match it in a rewrite rule. Luckily, it looks like you don't want to do anything with it anyway. Just use the rule above, and the hash will remain at the end of the URL in the browser.

Answer 2

I did solution. Problem was that after adding index.php?path= I wasn't able to work with query string...
The final universal solution that turn links from http://www.example.net/get1/get2/get3 to
http://example.net/index.php?path=get1+get2+get3:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$
RewriteRule (.*) http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^\/index.php(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.+) /index.phppath=/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^([^=]+=[^/]*)/([^/]+)(.*)$ $1$2+/$3 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\+/+$ $1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)path=(.*)$ $1?path=$2 [R=301,L]