url rewriting - How to write a url rewrite in nginx? -

i want people type in http://www.myweb.com/like/1234456 redirect http://www.myweb.com/item.php?itemid=1234456

i wrote in config doesn't work.

location = ^~/like/ {                 rewrite ^1234456  ../likeitem.php?item=1234456break;                 return 403;         } 

this test. haven't used $ matching yet.

i restart ngnix server still.. doesn't redirect.

the code above not work because of missing $ , poor use of return command. code above works nginx, including version 0.8.54.

format below : desiredurl actual url nginx_rule

they must inside location / {}

http://example.com/notes/343 http://example.com/notes.php?id=343  rewrite ^/notes/(.*)$ /notes.php?id=$1 last;  http://example.com/users/blackbenzkid http://example.com/user.php?username=blackbenzkid  rewrite ^/users/(.*)$ /user.php?username=$1 last;  http://example.com/top http://example.com/top.php  rewrite ^/top?$ /top.php last; 

complex , further

http://example.com/users/blackbenzkid/gallery http://example.com/user.php?username=blackbenzkid&page=gallery  rewrite ^/users/(.*)/gallery$ /user.php?username=$1&page=gallery last;