Diggbar modrewrite- How do they pass URLs through modrewrite?

Question

With the new Diggbar, you can put http://digg.com in front of any URL that you are currently at and it will create a Digg short URL. I am only assuming they do

Answer 1

You have to take the value from the request line because Apache removes empty path segments. The initially requested URI path /http://foobar/ becomes /http:/foobar/. But the request line (THE_REQUEST) stays untouched:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /(https?://[^\s]+)
RewriteRule ^https?:/ index.php?url=%1 [L]