I am attempting to redirect & rewrite some dynamic PHP URL's to pretty and SEO friendly URLs. I have manged to do this successfully through .htaccess with the following code:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^somevar=green&nodescription=([a-zA-Z0-9_-]*)$
RewriteRule (.*) /green\/%1\/? [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^green/([^/]*)/$ /script.php?somevar=green&nodescription=$1&rewrite=on [L]
This creates a somewhat pretty URL as follows:
http://www.mysite.com/green/aA43-/
As I say, this works absolutley fine. Apart from one thing. The parameter nodescription contains a non-descriptive random set of letters, numbers and other characters.
I would like to rewrite the nodescription parameter to a more descriptive one. I understand that I can do this with a rewritemap through Apache. However, I have no experience at doing soemthing like this, and I'm not entirely sure where to start.
Normally I would simply alter script.php so that it contains more descriptive parameters, but this time I have no control over the script; I am pulling it from another site using cURL.
Can anybody give me an example of how to pull this off?
Thanks!
Matt
Well, to answer my own question, to pull this off you need access httpd.conf file on your apache server. My shared hosting company didn't allow access to this file (I doubt any would allow you access).
So I bit the bullet and purchased a VPS. I will post the steps I took here in order to set the rewritemap up in the hope that it will help a lost soul :) Ok, here goes...
My VPS has WHM installed, so in WHM I went to:
Server Configuration >> Apache Configuration >> Include Editor
Pre Virtual Host Include >> All Versions
This feature takes any text you put in and includes it in your httpd.conf file without worrying that it will be overwritten at a later stage. If you don't have WHM on your server then you can add the text directly to your httpd.conf file; make sure it is outside and before any virtual hosts.
OK, so I included the following map declaration and rewrite rule:
#Map to redirect (swaps key and value)
RewriteMap rwmap txt:/home/*/public_html/rdmap.txt
<Directory /home/*/public_html/test>
Options All -Indexes
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^url/([^/]*)/$ /script.php?foo=${rwmap:$1|$1}&rewrite=on [L]
</Directory>
The actual map is a simple text file containing key/value pairs - you need to place this file in the directory declared in RewriteMap rwmap txt:/home/*/public_html/rdmap.txt.
And there you go. Apache now rewrites my URLs for me and I now have some nice and pretty SEO optimized links thanks to my rewrite map! Hoorah!
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^green/([^/]*)/(.*)$ /script.php?somevar=green&nodescription=$1&rewrite=on [L]
This rewrite will allow you to pass "arbitrary text" that has nothing to do with the rewrite. For example:
http://www.mysite.com/green/aA43-/some-seo-boosting-title
Will still reroute correctly to script.php; the latter part will simply be ignored by the rewrite.
Related
I am trying to do a 301 redirect with lightspeed webserver htaccess with no luck.
I need to do a url to url redirect without any related parameters.
for example:
from: http://www.example.com/?cat=123
to: http://www.example.com/some_url
I have tried:
RewriteRule http://www.example.com/?cat=123 http://www.example.com/some_url/ [R=301,L,NC]
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks for adding your code to your question. Once more we see how important that is:
your issue is that a RewriteRule does not operate on URLs, but on paths. So you need something like that instead:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?$ /some_url/ [R=301,L,NC,QSD]
From your question it is not clear if you want to ignore any GET parameters or if you only want to redirect if certain parameters are set. So here is a variant that will only get applied if some parameter is actually set in the request:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (?:^|&)cat=123(?:&|$)
RewriteRule ^/?$ /some_url/ [R=301,L,NC,QSD]
Another thing that does not really get clear is if you want all URLs below http://www.example.com/ (so below the path /) to be rewritten, or only that exact URL. If you want to keep any potential further path component of a request and still rewrite (for example http://www.example.com/foo => http://www.example.com/some_url/foo), then you need to add a capture in your regular expression and reuse the captured path components:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ /some_url/$1 [R=301,L,NC,QSD]
For either of this to work you need to have the interpretation of .htaccess style files enabled by means of the AllowOverride command. See the official documentation of the rewriting module for details. And you have to take care that that -htaccess style file is actually readable by the http server process and that it is located right inside the http hosts DOCUMENT_ROOT folder in the local file system.
And a general hint: you should always prefer to place such rules inside the http servers host configuration instead of using .htaccess style files. Those files are notoriously error prone, hard to debug and they really slow down the server. They are only provided as a last option for situations where you do not have control over the host configuration (read: really cheap hosting service providers) or if you have an application that relies on writing its own rewrite rules (which is an obvious security nightmare).
I recently changed a directory /old_dir/ to be /new_dir/ using this:
RedirectMatch 301 /old_dir/(.*) /new_dir/$1
Which seems to be working perfect for the url:
http://www.mysite.com/old_dir/test.php?var=xxxx
goes to
http://www.mysite.com/new_dir/test.php?var=xxxx
where test.php is the filename. But in many places I use:
http://www.mysite.com/old_dir/test?var=xxxx
which comes up with:
The requested URL /old_dir/test was not found on this server.
not using the .php extension takes advantage of some sort of apache plugin that knows it's a php handler, which seemingly messes up redirect because it says it doesn't exist now.
I am not sure how to fix this issue.
Edit: All the solutions are for this special case, but note that i have about 1000 other files that may not be php, or named the same.
For right now I just made a symbolic link in the old_dir with the name "test" to point to the new_dir's test.php. But I am still looking for a non-specific solution that includes my scenario.
Have you ever tried using mod_rewrite?
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)$ $1/$2.php [QSA]
RewriteRule ^old_dir/([^/]+)/$ new_dir/$1.php [QSA]
I'm working with an online encyclopedia and I am trying to achieve the following:
Given the physical location of a file in http://example.com/articles/c/a/t/Cat.html,
Get the location in the address bar to show http://example.com/encyclopedia/Cat.html
This also needs to work so that if a link is clicked or someone types in "example.com/encyclopedia/Cat.html", the server will look for the file in "/articles/c/a/t/Cat.html", yet still serve the shorter URI in the address bar.
I understand this may involve some heavy .htaccess voodoo to accomplish, or perhaps that it would be better to use a PHP script to serve this purpose.
So far I have the following in my .htaccess:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^encyclopedia/(.*)\.html$ articles/$1.html [NC]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ articles/(.*)
RewriteRule ^articles/(.*) /encyclopedia/$1 [L,R=301]
</IfModule>
However with this code, it only works by going to "example.com/encyclopedia/c/a/t/Cat.html" and showing the proper page, and when you go to "/articles/c/a/t/Cat.html it still doesn't rewrite it as "/encyclopedia/", it just stays the same.
Edit - By removing the GET\ part from the RewriteCond and removing the leading forward-slash from /encyclopedia/$1 in the following line, any requests to "/articles/c/a/t/Cat.html" are correctly redirected to "/encyclopedia/c/a/t/Cat.html". I am still at a loss trying to remove the "/c/a/t" part though. **
I've tried using the following two rules to remove the "c/a/t/" part:
RewriteRule ^encyclopedia/((.)(.)(.).*)\.html$ articles/$2/$3/$4/$1.html [NC]
RewriteRule ^articles/(.)/(.)/(.)/(.*) /encyclopedia/$4 [L,R=301]
But with no success as I'm sure what's happening is I'm getting the capital "C" from "Cat.html" and putting that in as "/articles/C/a/t/Cat.html" which will obviously not work.
I've been looking around studying .htaccess RewriteRule and RewriteCond for days but I still haven't been able to figure this out and been BHOK enough to cause a few migraines.
Would this be better accomplished using a PHP script? Or can this voodoo be easily enough accomplished via only .htaccess rules?
First thing, forget about .htaccess files. .htaccess files is just an extension of Apache configuration files that you can put in some directories. They're really slowing down your apache server, he needs to check part of his configuration at runtime. It's done to allow some configuration on hosted environments.
Put everything you have in .htaccess files in <Directory> sections on your VirtualHost and use AllowOverride None to tell Apache to forget about trying to read .htaccess files.
So what you need is mod-rewrite voodoo, not .htaccess voodoo :-)
Now your rewrite problem is quite complex. If you need some mod-rewrite help do not forget to read this ServFault article : Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mod_Rewrite Rules but Were Afraid to Ask?
I assume that your Cat.html -> c/a/t/Cat.html is just an example and that you can have more than 3 letters : CatAndDogs.html -> c/a/t/a/n/d/d/o/g/s/CatAndDogs.html.
The part of mod-reqrite you need is (I think) RewriteMap. There you will find some helpers like lowercase: that coudl help you, but you will also find the prg: which means using an external program to perform the mapping. I would use perl examples of such rewriteMaps examples available via google and make some transformations. Should be quite easy and Fast in Perl to transform CatAndDogs.html in c/a/t/a/n/d/d/o/g/s/CatAndDogs.html.
Note that RewriteMap will never work inside a .htaccess. Forget .htaccess files. The prg: keyword will launch your perl program as a parallel daemon and will feed him with quite a lot of data, you shoudl really write something robust & fast. Do not forget to use the RewriteLock directive to avoid mixing results (some prg: mappers do not care about mixing results, think about load balancers for examples, but you do want to avoid mixing results for parallel queries)
I am a newbie to ubuntu and apache. Can someone tell me how I could direct to
www.mysite.com/drupal6
when user address www.mysite.com?
Thanks a lot.
Cheers.
If you are running Apache and Ubuntu, there is actually a really easy way to force this redirect using a simple php script.
Create an index.php file in the root of your server and paste the following code into it
<?php header("location: drupal6/") ?>
This will cause the site to auto-redirect to the drupal6 folder whenever it is visited.
This should work. Create a file in the root folder of your server called .htaccess - the dot at the beginning is very important as this helps the server identify the file as a hidden / system config file.
Open the file and paste the following lines of code in :
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ www.mysite.com/drupal6/$1 [R,L]
This should force all traffic to the server to redirect to your custom folder.
A brief explanation of the .htaccess code
If you want rewrites to work, you have to enable the Rewrite Engine and tell the server to follow symlinks.
The second section establishes the rule - specifically applying it to all traffic on the standard web port of 80.
The final line tells the server to grab everything after the URL and append it to the new address (mysite.com/drupal6).
There's a lot more you can do with .htaccess files but you really need to Google for good examples to test out.
Look at Apache's mod_rewrite documentation. You will need a RewriteRule in your apache configuration at the minimum, you may also need RewriteCond's to define when the RewriteRule is used.
Your rewrite pattern will be rewriting the REQUEST_URI with something from: ^/$ to: /drupal6. The ^ and $ are essential to prevent Apache getting into an infinite loop while rewriting the base URI by only matching "/" and not "/anything-else".
I assume you're on a recent version of Ubuntu and Apache? If so, see the Apache 2.2 documentation on mod_rewrite.
I hope I can explain this clearly enough, but if not let me know and I'll try to clarify.
I'm currently developing a site using ColdFusion and have a mod_rewrite rule in place to make it look like the site is using PHP. Any requests for index.php get processed by index.cfm (the rule maps *.php to *.cfm).
This works great - so far, so good. The problem is that I want to return a 404 status code if index.cfm (or any ColdFusion page) is requested directly.
If I try to block access to *.cfm files using mod_rewrite it also returns a 404 for requests to *.php.
I figure I might have to change my Apache config rather than use .htaccess
You can use the S flag to skip the 404 rule, like this:
RewriteEngine on
# Do not separate these two rules so long as the first has S=1
RewriteRule (.*)\.php$ $1.cfm [S=1]
RewriteRule \.cfm$ - [R=404]
If you are also using the Alias option then you should also add the PT flag. See the mod_rewrite documentation for details.
Post the rules you already have as a starting point so people don't have to recreate it to help you.
I would suggest testing [L] on the rule that maps .php to .cfm files as the first thing to try.
You have to use two distinct groups of rewrite rules, one for .php, the other for .chm and make them mutually exclusives with RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}. And make use of the flag [L] as suggested by jj33.
You can keep your rules in .htaccess.