read images from root directory in subdomain with htaccess - apache

Question

I have a domain like example.com where root directory is web.
I have created a subdomain happy.example.com where directory is outside web folder called happy and connected it to happy.example.com.
My webpage tree looks like
happy
web/images
So all my images for root directory are stored in (web/images)
example.com/images
So a full path to an image can be
example.com/images/me.png
Now i have created a sudbdomain which i call:
happy.example.com
What i would like to do is if i type
happy.example.com/images/me.png
then i should be able to see the picture.
So somehow i need to link all images folder to a subdomain from root directory in web.
I hope you guys got my question.
I guess i shoud have an htaccess file with all funny stuff in happy folder?
Cheerz

Answer 1

Since the two document roots of your two domains aren't connect to each other (one inside the other, or the same), you'll need to either redirect or proxy, or, use a script.
To redirect is easiest, but it'll change the URL in the browser's location bar:
Redirect 301 /images http://example.com/images
or using mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^images/(.*)$ http://example.com/images/$1 [L,R=301]
To proxy, you need to have mod_proxy loaded, which isn't always the case if you're using a webhost or hosting service. But you can use the P flag in mod_rewrite to do this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^images/(.*)$ http://example.com/images/$1 [L,P]
The last option is to route all image request to a script, like a php script or something. And the script itself returns the image:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^images/(.*)$ /load_image.php?image=$1 [L]
then you'd have something like:
<?php
header("Content-type: image/jpeg");
readfile('../web/images/' . $_GET['image']);
?>
Obviously, you'd need to check the extension and return the correct content type depending on the image type.