htaccess, MySQL DB and non-existent files - apache

I have content in a MySQL DB that I'd like to display on my home page, depending on the URL the user came from. I don't want mod_rewrite to change my URL, but rather, to do the following:
Keep URL (ie mysite.com/demolink2)
Check is the page exists, and if not, redirect to index.php, passing the "demolink2" variable (essentially the end of the URL string after last trailing slash)
On the index.php side I'll be able to then serve up the content, but again, I don't want the user to see the URL changed to mysite.com/index.php?id=demolink2, but rather, have the mysite.com/index.php page STAY as mysite.com/demolink2 until they click a URL within the site that leads to a real page.
Here's my current .htaccess which accomplishes the first bit; i.e. it will see if the page already exists, and if not, direct user to index, however I've done that with a rewrite.
Any help/comments would be appreciated.
htaccess file:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^$ /index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) /index.php [L]

Just change the last line to
RewriteRule (.*) /index.php?id=$1 [QSA,L]
The URL in browser will remain the same as it is rewrite (internal redirect) and not proper 3xx code redirect.
If mysite.com/demolink2 is requested, your script will see it as /index.php?id=demolink2;
If it will be mysite.com/hello/kitten, then script will see index.php?id=hello/kitten;
QSA flag is added to preserve existing query string.

Related

.htaccess RewriteRule from long url to show short url

Im trying to rewrite url from long to short but cant wrap my head around this.
My survey rewrite works wonderfully but after completing my survet php redirects to www.example.com/survey_thank_you.php?survey_id=1
but I would like to show url like www.example.com/thank_you
Im not even sure if this is possible.
Im new with .htaccess and i have tried almost everthing
.htaccess
Options +FollowSymLinks
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^survey_thank_you.php?survey_name=([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/?$ Thank_you [L,NC,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/?$ survey_form.php?survey_name=$1 [L,NC,QSA] #works like charm.
Any help or directions will be highly appreciated.
Solution:
Options +FollowSymLinks
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^survey_id=([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/?$
RewriteRule ^survey_thank_you\.php$ /%1/thank_you [R,L,QSD]
RewriteRule ^([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/thank_you$ survey_thank_you.php?survey_id=$1 [L,NC,QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/?$ survey_form.php?survey_name=$1 [L,NC,QSA]
but after completing my survet php redirects to www.example.com/survey_thank_you.php?survey_id=1
You need to "correct" the URL that PHP is redirecting you to after the survey. If the desired URL is /thank_you (or /Thank_you?) then PHP should be redirecting to that URL.
You then use mod_rewrite in .htaccess to internally rewrite /thank_you back into the URL that your application understands. ie. /survey_thank_you.php?survey_id=1. However, therein lies another problem, where does the 1 (survey_id) come from in the query string? Presumably you don't want to hardcode this? So this would need to passed in the requested URL. eg. /1/thank_you or perhaps /thank_you/1?
However, is this really necessary? The resulting "thank you" page is not a page that should be indexed or a page that is normally navigated to by the user, so implementing a user-friendly URL here doesn't seem to be a worthwhile exercise?
RewriteRule ^survey_thank_you.php?survey_name=([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/?$ Thank_you [L,NC,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/?$ survey_form.php?survey_name=$1 [L,NC,QSA] #works like charm.
You are using a survey_name URL parameter (referencing an alphanumeric value) in your directives, but a survey_id ("numeric"?) URL parameter in your earlier example? So, which is it? Or are these rules unrelated?
You state that the second rule "works like charm", but how? What URL are you requesting? That would seem to rewrite /Thank_you to survey_form.php?survey_name=Thank_you - but that does not look correct?
As mentioned in comments, the RewriteRule pattern matches against the URL-path only. To match against the query string you need an additional condition that matches against the QUERY_STRING server variable. This would also need to be an external 3xx redirect, not an internal rewrite (in order to change the URL that the user sees). Therein lies another problem... if you don't change the URL that your PHP script is redirecting to then users will experience two redirects after submitting the form.
You also need to be careful to avoid a redirect loop, since you are internally rewriting the request in the opposite direction. You need to prevent the redirect being triggered after the request is rewritten. ie. Only redirect direct requests from the user should be redirected.
So, to answer your specific question, it should be rewritten something like this instead:
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^survey_name=[0-9a-zA-Z]+/?$
RewriteRule ^survey_thank_you\.php$ /Thank_you [QSD,R,L]
The check against the REDIRECT_STATUS environment variable ensures that only direct requests are processed, not internally rewritten requests by the later rewrite. REDIRECT_STATUS is empty on the initial request and set to the string 200 (as in 200 OK status) after the first successful rewrite.
The QSD flag (Apache 2.4) is necessary to discard the original query string from the redirect response.
So the above would redirect /survey_thank_you.php?survey_name=<something> to /Thank_you.
But this is losing the "survey_name" (or survey_id?), so should perhaps be more like the following, in order to preserve the "survey_name":
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^survey_name=([0-9a-zA-Z]+)/?$
RewriteRule ^survey_thank_you\.php$ /%1/Thank_you [QSD,R,L]
Where %1 is a backreference to the value of the survey_name URL parameter captured in the preceding CondPattern.
However, you would then need to modify your rewrite that turns this back into an understandable URL.
(But you should probably not be doing this in the first place without first changing the actual URLs in the application.)

Htaccess access specify file

I have .htaccess file:
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^play/([^/\.]+) index.php?task=view&name=$1 [L]
Show page game.
My problem: When I need to load some file (or access by address bar) with path: /play/Assest/file-name.swf. This return 404 error.
How I can access file but don't change RewriteRule above?
I tried redirect code but it's not working:
RewriteRule ^/play/Assets/file-name.swf ^/games/Assets/file-name.swf [R=301,L]
Your RewriteRule is missing an anchor to the end of the URL, so partial matches still get rewritten. Add a $like this:
RewriteRule ^play/([^/.]+)$ index.php?task=view&name=$1 [L]
Shahaf's answer may also help you (although it means the file system gets polled twice for every request, which affects performance), but with this above you are saying "only match play/ with anything but dots or forward slashes following it" which seems to be what you mean. Without the dollar it can have anything after it and still match, as you have found.
I also removed the escaping of the dot which is not necessary in a character class.
Before the rewrite rule you should add conditions if it's not a file or directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

CakePHP 301 Redirects appending extra query string parameter

I am trying to redirect old asp pages on a domain name so they link to their respective pages on the CakePHP version (using 1.3). The domain name is the same. These redirects are being added so results in search engines go to the new Cake page.
I have a bunch of Redirect 301's in my /.htaccess file (app/.htaccess and app/webroot/.htaccess are default).
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
Redirect 301 /contacts.asp http://domain/contacts
Redirect 301 /users.asp http://domain/users
</IfModule>
But for some reason, when I go to any of the urls to test the redirects, it appends an extra query string parameter. For example:
Going to: http://domain/contacts.asp results in http://domain/contacts?url=contacts.asp
So the redirect is working but it is appending the url query string parameter. I don't want to completely remove all query string parameters because some of the old asp links have query string parameters that I would also like passed to the corresponding Cake page.
I believe the "url" query string parameter is coming from the app/webroot/.htaccess file as seen:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
Note that when I put all my 301 redirects into my Virtual hosts file, the url parameter is not appended. I would like to keep all these redirects in my .htaccess file. How can I prevent this url query string parameter from being appended?
This looks like a case of mod_rewrite and mod_alias stepping over each other. The URI processing pipeline doesn't end when a Redirect directive is applied, it continues through the pipeline and mod_rewrite does its thing. Unfortunately, the end result isn't always what you want. You could just stick with mod_rewrite and drop the Redirect directives.
You can remove the 2 Redirect directives and add these 2 RewriteRules above the ones that map requests to the app/webroot:
RewriteRule ^contacts\.asp$ http://domain/contacts [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^users\.asp$ http://domain/users [L,R=301]

Apache mod_rewrite redirect, keep sub-directory name

I'm wondering if this is possible.
I have a single page site in which I'd like to incorporate a trailing slash with a file name that anchors to a section on that site. I'm trying to avoid using hash or hash-bangs.
For example; www.example.com/recent
Right now, I'm removing any trailing slash, but I get a 404 with /recent because it's expecting a file.
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]
Is it possible to redirect to www.example.com, but still maintain the /recent without the server thinking it's a file so I can read it client-side (php/js)? More so that I can keep using the back and forward buttons.
Thanks for any help!
TBH it is not 100% clear for me what you want. As I understand you want URL www.example.com/recent to be rewritten (internal redirect, when URL remains unchanged in browser) to www.example.com/index.php?page=recent (or something like that).
DirectorySlash Off
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# remove trailing slash if present
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]
# do not do anything for already existing files
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule .+ - [L]
# rewrite all non-existing resources to index.php
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /index.php?page=$1 [L,QSA]
With the above rules (that need to be placed in .htaccess in website root folder) this can be achieved. Request for www.example.com/recent will be rewritten to www.example.com/index.php?page=recent so your single-page server side script knows which URL was requested. The same will be with any other non-existing resource e.g. www.example.com/hello/pink/kitten => www.example.com/index.php?page=hello/pink/kitten.
It may not be necessary to pass originally requested URI as a page parameter as you should be able to access it in PHP via $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] anyway.
If I misunderstood you and this is not what you want then you have to clarify your question (update it with more details, make it sound clear).

Why is Apache mod_rewrite not behaving as expected

I want to redirect URLs from an old site that used raw URL requests to my new site which I have implemented in CodeIgniter. I simply want to redirect them to my index page. I also would like to get rid of "index.php" in my URLs so that my URLs can be as simple as example.com/this/that. So, this is the .htaccess file I have created:
RewriteEngine on
Options FollowSymLinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond $1 ^assets
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ example/production/$1
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} .+
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php? [R=301]
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|example|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1
It should also be noted that my index.php is actually a symlink to example/production/index.php.
Now, the first rule works as expected - all my styles and images show up just fine, it's the second two rules I'm having trouble with. The second rule is basically to destroy the query string and redirect to my index page (externally). So, I found this in the Apache manual:
Note: Query String
The Pattern will not be matched against the query string. Instead, you must use a RewriteCond with the %{QUERY_STRING} variable. You can, however, create URLs in the substitution string, containing a query string part. Simply use a question mark inside the substitution string, to indicate that the following text should be re-injected into the query string. When you want to erase an existing query string, end the substitution string with just a question mark. To combine a new query string with an old one, use the [QSA] flag.
However, when I try to access one of the old pages, instead of redirecting to my index page, I get a 404 page not found error. I have figured out a workaround by making it an internal redirect, but I would really like it to be external.
The next problem, and the one that has been baffling me the most is with the third rule. I would expect this to do something like the following. If I type in:
http://example.com/this/thing
I would expect it to re-route to
http://example.com/index.php/this/thing
Unfortunately, this does not work. Instead, no matter what I type in, it always routes to my index page as if nothing else was in the URL (it just goes to http://example.com/).
Furthermore, and even more confusing to me, if I replace that rule with the following:
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|example|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/this/thing
If I type in a URL such as http://example.com/other/thing, then it will go to http://example.com/index.php/this/thing as expected, BUT if I type in http://example.com/this/thing it goes to http://example.com/ (my index page). I can't make heads or tails out of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
This should solve your index.php problem and it will simply detect if a robots.txt is available:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
hmmm - this doesn't seem to work either. The problem is my URLs aren't really asking for a filename or directory anyway. For example: example.com/index.php/this/thing should call the 'thing' method of the 'this' controller. – Steven Oxley
The condition is: If request is NOT a file and NOT a directory, so that was right, what you should have done is combine the appending of the request string:
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]