Hide public access to directories but allow through RewriteRule - apache

Question

I have the following structure:
public_html/
hidden_directory/
sub_folder/
sample_file.txt
other_file.txt
another_folder/
another_file.txt
My end goal is to have the contents of hidden_directory visible only through redirects. My first attempt at putting them outside the public_html was unsuccessful. Then I tried the structure you see above with a Redirect like
RewriteRule ^sub/(.*) hidden_directory/sub_folder/$1 [L]
to access through:
http://mysite/sub/sample_file.txt
And that worked great giving me the content I wanted from the file location and URL I wanted. But I didn't like that files were also available from:
http://mysite/hidden_directory/sub_folder/sample_file.txt
I did do a
deny from all
in hidden_directory, and that stopped direct access like I wanted, though it also broke the rewrites.
Is there any htaccess solution that I could have these files in a folder not directly accessible yet still reachable with rewrites?

Answer 1

Is there any htaccess solution that I could have these files in a folder not directly accessible yet still reachable with rewrites?
Yes use a rule based on THE_REQUEST variable to block direct access to hidden_directory:
RewriteEngine On
# block direct access to a given path
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/+hidden_directory[/?\s] [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [F]
RewriteRule ^sub/(.*)$ hidden_directory/sub_folder/$1 [L,NC]
THE_REQUEST variable represents original request received by Apache from your browser and it doesn't get overwritten after execution of some rewrite rules. Example value of this variable is GET /index.php?id=123 HTTP/1.1