.htaccess rewrite in subdirectory - apache

Question

I am currently deploying a number of sites from one hosting account. I have all of the sites in their own folder including the primary domain. The issue I have is when I rewrite the primary domains address with my current code, it includes the subdirectory in it. So currently if I type in http://www.example.com/url it rewrites to https://example.com/folder/url. I just want it to rewrite without the folder.
Any ideas. I know I am complicating this by running my primary domain in a subdirectory, just trying to clean up hosting as best as possible.
In my public_html .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/folder/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /folder/$1
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ folder/index.php [L]
and in public_html/folder .htaccess:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]

Answer 1

So currently if I type in http://www.site.whatever/url it rewrites to https://site.whatever/folder/url.
This is a "redirect", not a rewrite.
This is happening because of the use of the REQUEST_URI server variable in your HTTP to HTTPS redirect in your public_html/folder .htaccess file:
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]
The REQUEST_URI server variable contains the full URL-path of the request, which, by the time the subdirectory's .htaccess file is called, has been updated to contain /folder.
You need to either:
Move your canonical www to non-www and HTTP to HTTPS redirects to the .htaccess file in the document root. (This would be preferable if you have no other mod_rewrite directives in your public_html/folder .htaccess file.)
OR,
Modify the above directive to use the $1 backreference (to the captured RewriteRule pattern) as you are doing in the preceding www to non-www redirect. For example:
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
(Note that this should ultimately be a 301 redirect, once you have confirmed it works OK.)
And don't forget to escape literal dots in the regex.