Apache2 mod_rewrite pattern restriction? - apache

So I have a site that I want to make SEO friendly by using mod_rewrite. I want to make the URLs easy to remember by dropping the .php on the end of them and using mod_rewrite to re-attach them later on. So for example say http://example.com/about would point to http://example.com/about.php. I have the RewriteRule that should work from my experience but for some reason doesn't.
My rule:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?about$ about.php [L]
RewriteRule ^/?faq$ faq.php [L]
Now these rules don't work like that exactly. it seems that if I rename the files to blah.about.php and blah.faq.php and change the RewriteRule lines to reflect the new filenames it works.
Is this a restriction of mod_rewrite where the Pattern can't be so close to the target file?

Try this:
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s/+(.*)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [R=301,QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1\.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ $1.php [L]
First rule redirect the request to phpless page and the next internally to the php file itself.
Is this a restriction of mod_rewrite where the Pattern can't be so close to the target file?
Its not really a restriction, you just can't redirect the php file to non-php and then back to it as it generates a loop, so what we do is capture the request and redirect from there and then internally redirect to the file.
Unless of course like you have seen they have a different naming.

Related

.htaccess URL rewrite not working, tried all possible options

I was trying to rewrite a URL for making my site SEO friendly, but .htaccess rewrite not seems to work.
My URL is
www.tasteofkochi.com/dine-detail.php?a=150
I need this to look like
www.tasteofkochi.com/sometext/150
I did the simple formula but it's not reflecting, intact nothing happens at all. If I add some junk char in htaccess, site crashes, which means htaccess is working fine. Also I added a formula to remove .php extn, and that too works fine. Only issue is with this one. Can anyone please help me. I enable rewrite in httpd and allow all in directories, still not working.
Below is my .htacces
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteBase /
## hide .php extension
# To externally redirect
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L,NC]
## To internally redirect
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [L]
RewriteRule ^detail/([0-9]+)/?$ dine-detail.php?a=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php?p=$1 [L,QSA]
We can create pretty urls with .htaccess and php by mainly two files one is .htaccess and another index.php
Example

Url renaming using .htaccess file

Most are for redirections and removing file extensions or for dynamic urls.
The problem being I can't get a simple static url to rename
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^fileThathasalongname file.html
What I currently have 'mysite.co.uk/fileThathasalongname.html'
What I want is 'mysite.co.uk/file/' while file = file.html
using:
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^FileIWantToChange.html FriendlyNamed.html
Using this gives me the error multiple Choices
+++++++++++++++++Edit+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thought i'd add my final version for people to look at, it may help, the anwser below is correct.
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
DirectorySlash Off
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME}/ -d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME}.html !-f
RewriteRule [^/]$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^FriendlyNamed.html FileIWantToChange.html [L]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule [^/]$ %{REQUEST_URI}.html [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysire.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mysite.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]
all works a charm!
I see multiple issues going on. Firstly the regular expression is matched against the friendly URL the user types in. So you need to swap your friendly url and file path with each other. The friendly or "fake" name goes on the left while the url to redirect to silently goes on the right. Also make sure you've set the directory base to /. Finally it's good to add an [L] to enforce it to be the last rule in case anything in the same file tries to rewrite the path. Due note that other htaccess files lower down, depending on the files location, will also be checked even when enforcing the rule has the last rule. Also junk the options part completely. Give this a try:
RewriteBase /
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^FriendlyNamed.html FileIWantToChange.html [L]
RewriteRule ^fileThathasalongname.html file.html

.htaccess rewrite all 'other' URLs

Hopefully this is a simple one. I have a really basic .htaccess that rewrites any request to /admin (or /admin/etc) to /_admin/index.php. So far so good:
#Options All -Indexes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /admin
RewriteRule ^admin/$ /_admin/index.php [QSA]
RewriteRule ^admin$ /_admin/index.php [QSA]
RewriteRule ^admin/(.+)$ /_admin/index.php [QSA]
What I also want is a generic "catch all else" rule that rewrites any other url (/users, /turnips/, /some/other/path and so forth) back to /index.php
I can't seem to get that to work - its either server error 500's or /admin also gets rewritten to the root page. I'm sure I just need to do something with RewriteCond but I can't figure it out.
Thanks!
Add this after the other rules. It would be the default rule if the previous rules are not applied.
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule .* index.php [L,QSA]
First of all I suggest you add the L flag to your rewrites so you're sure to avoid unintended matches after matching a rewrite (unless intended of course).
Secondly WordPress uses the following code to rewrite all URLs that are not matching index.php OR a file that already exists. This way files accessed directly like images, text files, downloads etc are not rewritten. Note that originally it also included the line RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d to also not rewrite directories but you seem to want that behaviour:
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . /index.php - [L]
Please see if this fits your needs.

htaccess canonical url with slugs

Trying to figure out how to write my httaccess to let me have it so my urls are 'www' free and allow me to have a slug style setup for 'friendly' urls. I seem to keep writing myself into an internal 500 error though. That or it doesn't seem to carry over the extra stuff. extra stuf being anything from .com/ over ie mydomain.com/hello/world
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/?$ http://mydomain.com/index.php?r=$1
Overall goal take URL in either of these 2 fashions
http://mydomain.com/hello/world
http://www.mydomain.com/hello/world
and have it translate to
http://mydomain.com/hello/world to the front end but on the backend be the equivalent to http://mydomain.com/index.php?r=hello/world
also I would like to apply conditions where if a file exists, or folder exists, or whatever exists stop the rewrite cold. I know this is possible well without the removal of the www part, not sure with that part, as I used to once have an htaccess file that I could do this with, but I have lost that file and its been far to long since ive played with htaccess to remember how i did it in the first place.
This will forward www to non-www site. Also take care of the index.php.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?r=$1 [QSA,L]
You can also add the following two lines. Like this if you have any css or images it will not rewrite them to index.php:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?r=$1 [QSA,L]
This is not tested but a general guidance.

Remove .php extension with .htaccess

Yes, I've read the Apache manual and searched here. For some reason I simply cannot get this to work. The closest I've come is having it remove the extension, but it points back to the root directory. I want this to just work in the directory that contains the .htaccess file.
I need to do three things with the .htaccess file.
I need it to remove the .php
a. I have several pages that use tabs and the URL looks like page.php#tab - is this possible?
b. I have one page that uses a session ID appended to the URL to make sure you came from the right place, www.domain.example/download-software.php?abcdefg.
Is this possible? Also in doing this, do I need to remove .php from the links in my header nav include file? Should IE "support" be support?
I would like it to force www before every URL, so it's not domain.example, but www.domain.example/page.
I would like to remove all trailing slashes from pages.
I'll keep looking, trying, etc. Would being in a sub directory cause any issues?
Gumbo's answer in the Stack Overflow question How to hide the .html extension with Apache mod_rewrite should work fine.
Re 1) Change the .html to .php
Re a.) Yup, that's possible, just add #tab to the URL.
Re b.) That's possible using QSA (Query String Append), see below.
This should also work in a sub-directory path:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule !.*\.php$ %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php [QSA,L]
Apache mod_rewrite
What you're looking for is mod_rewrite,
Description: Provides a rule-based rewriting engine to rewrite
requested URLs on the fly.
Generally speaking, mod_rewrite works by matching the requested document against specified regular expressions, then performs URL rewrites internally (within the Apache process) or externally (in the clients browser). These rewrites can be as simple as internally translating example.com/foo into a request for example.com/foo/bar.
The Apache docs include a mod_rewrite guide and I think some of the things you want to do are covered in it. Detailed mod_rewrite guide.
Force the www subdomain
I would like it to force "www" before every URL, so its not domain.example but www.domain.example/page
The rewrite guide includes instructions for this under the Canonical Hostname example.
Remove trailing slashes (Part 1)
I would like to remove all trailing slashes from pages
I'm not sure why you would want to do this as the rewrite guide includes an example for the exact opposite, i.e., always including a trailing slash. The docs suggest that removing the trailing slash has great potential for causing issues:
Trailing Slash Problem
Description:
Every webmaster can sing a song about the problem of the trailing
slash on URLs referencing directories. If they are missing, the server
dumps an error, because if you say /~quux/foo instead of /~quux/foo/
then the server searches for a file named foo. And because this file
is a directory it complains. Actually it tries to fix it itself in
most of the cases, but sometimes this mechanism need to be emulated by
you. For instance after you have done a lot of complicated URL
rewritings to CGI scripts etc.
Perhaps you could expand on why you want to remove the trailing slash all the time?
Remove .php extension
I need it to remove the .php
The closest thing to doing this that I can think of is to internally rewrite every request document with a .php extension, i.e., example.com/somepage is instead processed as a request for example.com/somepage.php. Note that proceeding in this manner would would require that each somepage actually exists as somepage.php on the filesystem.
With the right combination of regular expressions this should be possible to some extent. However, I can foresee some possible issues with index pages not being requested correctly and not matching directories correctly.
For example, this will correctly rewrite example.com/test as a request for example.com/test.php:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php
But will make example.com fail to load because there is no example.com/.php
I'm going to guess that if you're removing all trailing slashes, then picking a request for a directory index from a request for a filename in the parent directory will become almost impossible. How do you determine a request for the directory 'foobar':
example.com/foobar
from a request for a file called foobar (which is actually foobar.php)
example.com/foobar
It might be possible if you used the RewriteBase directive. But if you do that then this problem gets way more complicated as you're going to require RewriteCond directives to do filesystem level checking if the request maps to a directory or a file.
That said, if you remove your requirement of removing all trailing slashes and instead force-add trailing slashes the "no .php extension" problem becomes a bit more reasonable.
# Turn on the rewrite engine
RewriteEngine on
# If the request doesn't end in .php (Case insensitive) continue processing rules
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.php$ [NC]
# If the request doesn't end in a slash continue processing the rules
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [^/]$
# Rewrite the request with a .php extension. L means this is the 'Last' rule
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L]
This still isn't perfect -- every request for a file still has .php appended to the request internally. A request for 'hi.txt' will put this in your error logs:
[Tue Oct 26 18:12:52 2010] [error] [client 71.61.190.56] script '/var/www/test.peopleareducks.com/rewrite/hi.txt.php' not found or unable to stat
But there is another option, set the DefaultType and DirectoryIndex directives like this:
DefaultType application/x-httpd-php
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
Update 2013-11-14 - Fixed the above snippet to incorporate nicorellius's observation
Now requests for hi.txt (and anything else) are successful, requests to example.com/test will return the processed version of test.php, and index.php files will work again.
I must give credit where credit is due for this solution as I found it Michael J. Radwins Blog by searching Google for php no extension apache.
Remove trailing slashes
Some searching for apache remove trailing slashes brought me to some Search Engine Optimization pages. Apparently some Content Management Systems (Drupal in this case) will make content available with and without a trailing slash in URLs, which in the SEO world will cause your site to incur a duplicate content penalty. Source
The solution seems fairly trivial, using mod_rewrite we rewrite on the condition that the requested resource ends in a / and rewrite the URL by sending back the 301 Permanent Redirect HTTP header.
Here's his example which assumes your domain is blamcast.net and allows the the request to optionally be prefixed with www..
#get rid of trailing slashes
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?blamcast\.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
Now we're getting somewhere. Lets put it all together and see what it looks like.
Mandatory www., no .php, and no trailing slashes
This assumes the domain is foobar.example and it is running on the standard port 80.
# Process all files as PHP by default
DefaultType application/x-httpd-php
# Fix sub-directory requests by allowing 'index' as a DirectoryIndex value
DirectoryIndex index index.html
# Force the domain to load with the www subdomain prefix
# If the request doesn't start with www...
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.foobar\.com [NC]
# And the site name isn't empty
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
# Finally rewrite the request: end of rules, don't escape the output, and force a 301 redirect
RewriteRule ^/?(.*) http://www.foobar.example/$1 [L,R,NE]
#get rid of trailing slashes
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?foobar\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
The 'R' flag is described in the RewriteRule directive section. Snippet:
redirect|R [=code] (force redirect) Prefix Substitution with
http://thishost[:thisport]/ (which makes the new URL a URI) to force
a external redirection. If no code is given, a HTTP response of 302
(MOVED TEMPORARILY) will be returned.
Final Note
I wasn't able to get the slash removal to work successfully. The redirect ended up giving me infinite redirect loops. After reading the original solution closer I get the impression that the example above works for them because of how their Drupal installation is configured. He mentions specifically:
On a normal Drupal site, with clean URLs enabled, these two addresses
are basically interchangeable
In reference to URLs ending with and without a slash. Furthermore,
Drupal uses a file called .htaccess to tell your web server how to
handle URLs. This is the same file that enables Drupal's clean URL
magic. By adding a simple redirect command to the beginning of your
.htaccess file, you can force the server to automatically remove any
trailing slashes.
In addition to other answers above,
You may also try this to remove .php extensions completely from your file and to avoid infinite loop:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ $1.php [NC,L]
This code will work in Root/.htaccess,
Be sure to change the RewriteBase if you want to place this to a htaccess file in sub directory.
On Apache 2.4 and later, you can also use the END flag to prevent infinite loop error. The following example works same as the above on Apache 2.4,
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.php$ /$1 [R,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ /$1.php [NC,END]
The following code works fine for me:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php
After changing the parameter AllowOverride from None to All in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (Debian 8), following this, the .htaccess file just must contain:
Options +MultiViews
AddHandler php5-script php
AddType text/html php
And it was enough to hide .php extension from files
I've ended up with the following working code:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [NC,L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [NC,L]
Here's a method if you want to do it for just one specific file:
RewriteRule ^about$ about.php [L]
Ref: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/htaccess/remove-file-extention-from-urls/
Try this
The following code will definitely work
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [NC,L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [NC,L]
Not sure why the other answers didn't work for me but this code I found did:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
That is all that is in my htaccess and example.com/page shows example.com/page.php
To remove the .php extension from a PHP file for example yoursite.example/about.php to yoursite.example/about: Open .htaccess (create new one if not exists) file from root of your website, and add the following code.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
To remove the .html extension from a HTML file for example yoursite.example/about.html to yoursite.example/about: Open .htaccess (create new one if not exists) file from root of your website, and add the following code.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]
Reference: How to Remove PHP Extension from URL
Try this:-
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule !.*\.php$ %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php [QSA,L]
I found 100% working Concept for me:
# Options is required by Many Hosting
Options +MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
# For .php & .html URL's:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]
Use this code in Root of your website .htaccess file like :
offline - wamp\www\YourWebDir
online - public_html/
If it doesn't work correct, then change the settings of your Wamp
Server: 1) Left click WAMP icon 2) Apache 3) Apache Modules 4) Left
click rewrite_module
Here is the code that I used to hide the .php extension from the filename:
## hide .php extension
# To redirect /dir/foo.php to /dir/foo
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L,NC]
Note: R=301 is for permanent redirect and is recommended to use for SEO purpose. However if one wants just a temporary redirect replace it with just R
Try
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L]
If you're coding in PHP and want to remove .php so you can have a URL like:
http://yourdomain.example/blah -> which points to /blah.php
This is all you need:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
If your URL in PHP like http://yourdomain.example/demo.php than comes like
http://yourdomain.example/demo
This is all you need:
create file .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} "^[^ ]* .*?\.php[? ].*$"
RewriteRule .* - [L,R=404]