accessing same file with different name using htaccess - apache

Question

I am clarify my problem into steps and this help to understand what I am trying to do.
I am trying to build url shotner using htaccess, let say https://example.com/index.php/A43DS4 where index.php is the main file which can be excess as https://example.com/index/A43DS4 by writing this htaccess code:
RewriteEngine On
# by writing the below rule: we can excess the index.php page with:http://example.com/url
# its convert index.php to url/image/invite
# its remove .php extention
RewriteRule ^url?$ index.php
RewriteRule ^image?$ index.php
RewriteRule ^invite?$ index.php
# by writing the below rule: we can excess the URL-CODE with:http://example.com/index/[URL-CODE]
# its convert index.php to index/
# its remove .php extention
# Accepts all alfa-numeric $_GET[link]
RewriteRule ^index/([0-9a-zA-Z]+) index.php?link=$1
but what I want is instead of writing single individual line like:
RewriteRule ^url?$ index.php
RewriteRule ^image?$ index.php
RewriteRule ^invite?$ index.php
I want:
RewriteRule ^url|image|invite?$ index.php
same as for:
RewriteRule ^index/([0-9a-zA-Z]+) index.php?link=$1
to:
RewriteRule ^index|url|image|invite/([0-9a-zA-Z]+) index.php?link=$1
but unfortunatly ^url|image|invite?$ index.php is not working. I am not good at apache. if anybody provide some sort of direction and poinout my mistake it would be a great.

Answer 1

I think this is what you are looking for:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?index/(\w+)/?$ /index.php?link=$1 [END]
RewriteRule ^/?(?:url|image|invite)/?$ /index.php [END]
This rule will work likewise in the http servers host configuration or inside a dynamic configuration file (".htaccess" file). Obviously the rewriting module needs to be loaded inside the http server and enabled in the http host. In case you use a dynamic configuration file you need to take care that it's interpretation is enabled at all in the host configuration and that it is located in the host's DOCUMENT_ROOT folder.
In case you receive an internal server error (http status 500) using the rule above then chances are that you operate a very old version of the apache http server. You will see a definite hint to an unsupported [END] flag in your http servers error log file in that case. You can either try to upgrade or use the older [L] flag, it probably will work the same in this situation, though that depends a bit on your setup.
And a general remark: you should always prefer to place such rules in the http servers host configuration instead of using dynamic configuration files (".htaccess"). Those dynamic configuration files add complexity, are often a cause of unexpected behavior, hard to debug and they really slow down the http server. They are only provided as a last option for situations where you do not have access to the real http servers host configuration (read: really cheap service providers) or for applications insisting on writing their own rules (which is an obvious security nightmare).