This is a curiosity based question, rather than being related to any issue.
I wondered how WordPress rectifies pseudo URL addresses (e.g. blog.com/posts/2015/05/05/example_blog_post) to php generated pages? What are the mechanics behind this redirection process?
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Answer
This is actually a rule from the server config, not the CMS specifically. For instance, the common Apache config is:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
The second-to-last line if “if URL does not exist as a directory, also pass this on to WordPress”.
The rest is handled by the rewrite engine which is a bunch of compiled regular expressions. If you have the WordPress CLI you can run wp rewrite list and it will show you the entire list in priority order:
| match | query | source |
|---|---|---|
| (.?.+?)/embed/?$ | index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&embed=true | page |
| (.?.+?)/trackback/?$ | index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&tb=1 | page |
| (.?.+?)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ | index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2] | page |
| (.?.+?)/comment-page-([0-9]{1,})/?$ | index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&cpage=$matches[2] | page |
| (.?.+?)(?:/([0-9]+))?/?$ | index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&page=$matches[2] | page |
| [^/]+/attachment/([^/]+)/?$ | index.php?attachment=$matches[1] | post |