Joomla: Permanently redirect from example.com/index.php/foo/bar to example.com/foo/bar (no index.php in URL) - apache

Question

.htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php [L]
With this setup the page /foo/bar is accessible under the pretty URL example.com/foo/bar while the ugly URL example.com/index.php/foo/bar is still valid. What I need to achieve is a permanent redirection from example.com/index.php/foo/bar to example.com/foo/bar.
RewriteRule .* index.php [R=301,L] doesn't work.
RewriteRule (.*) index.php/$1 [R=301,L] does the exact opposite, it redirects from example.com/foo/bar to example.com/index.php/foo/bar. Please help me out!

Answer 1

I recommend writing this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# remove index.php from / OR any /dir
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*/)index\.php$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [L,R=301,NE]
# redirect rule to remove /index.php/ from start
RewriteRule ^index\.php(/.*) $1 [L,R=301,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
In the new rule, we match a pattern using regex ^index\.php(/.*) which matches a URI that starts with /index.php/ followed by zero or more of any characters. (/.*) is our match and the capture group after /index.php which is used as back-reference i.e. $1 (string that we've captured in group #1) in target to get a URI after /index.php as desired.
References:
Apache mod_rewrite Introduction
.htaccess tips and tricks