Make php files under a certain directory unaccessible using htaccess - apache

Question

I have a .htaccess file in place to redirect all requests that does not hit an existing file or directory to be parsed by my index.php file like this:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
# Our app bootstrap file is index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
This is working fine, But I'd like also to add another rule to prevent any direct access to php files under a certain directory, routing those calls to the same index.php file.
Like so:
request for example.com/something.php -> ok
request for example.com/themes/(anythinggoeshere)/somefile.php -> not
ok, route trough index.php
request for example.com/themes/(anythinggoeshere)/banner.png -> ok
I'm looking for a way to make those "rules" work to everything under the "themes" folder without breaking my current ones.
Thanks!

Answer 1

You can have a new rule to handle those .php requests:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
# handle .php requests via index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/themes/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^[^/]+/.+?\.php$ index.php?/$1 [L,NC]
# Our app bootstrap file is index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>