I'd like for any url that doesn't hit an existing file, to do a lookup on the other possible cases and see if those files exist, and if so, 302 to them.
If that's not possible, then I'm ok with these compromises:
Only check the lowercase version
Only check the first path portion
For example http://example.com/CoOl/PaTH/CaMELcaSE should redirect to http://example.com/cool/path/camelCase (assuming the latter exists).
but of course a full solution is much more useful to me and others
CheckSpelling on
Matches files and directories. See the documentation for details.
I don't have Apache handy to test, but some combination of these rules should do what you want:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap lower int:tolower
RewriteCond ${lower:%{REQUEST_URI}} -U
RewriteRule [A-Z] ${lower:%{REQUEST_URI}} [R=302,L]
A lowercase map to convert /SoMeThinG to /something
A condition to see if the lowercase of the REQUEST_URI exists (-U is internal apache query)
The rule to actually do the rewrite
I don't know if the RewriteMap can be applied in a condition, or if it only applies to a rule. These are based on experts exchange accepted answer and a small orange forum discussion.
Your "ideal" solution is probably not possible unless you can enumerate every valid page on your site. If you only have a few valid pages, a combination of RewriteMap and a text map will do exactly what you need. If there are hundreds / thousands of pages you may need to write a script and use the prg directive.
If you can't identify every valid page, you would need to try every variant in case. Consider your URL as a binary string, with 0 for lowercase letter and 1 for uppercase. Just from your simple example you'd have to test 2^17 variations, 128k pages.
Look up the Apache module mod_negotiation. It does exactly what you want:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_negotiation.html#multiviews
You can also pipe all requests to a single PHP file and let the PHP file do the checking for you.
Related
After site crash a redirect php script doesn't work as expected.
We try to fix it, but in the meantime we are looking for a quick solution to redirect search engine results so our visitors can at least visit after clicking a relative web page.
The url structure or the search engines result are something like this:
https://www.example.com/MainCategory/SubCategory_1/SubCategory_2/Product?page=1
and I'd like to redirect using the "SubCategory_2" part of the URL to something like this
https://www.example.com/SubCategory_2.php
so until we fully repair the script at least our visitors will se a relative web page.
I'm quite stuck... Any ideas?
Thank you
To redirect the stated URL, where all parts are variable (including an entirely variable, but present query string) then you can do something like the following using mod_rewrite near the top of your root .htaccess file (or crucially, before any existing internal rewrites):
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} .
RewriteRule ^[^/]+/[^/]+/([^/]+)/[^/]+$ /$1.php [QSD,R=302,L]
The QSD flag is necessary to discard the original query string from the redirected response.
The above will redirect:
/MainCategory/SubCategory_1/SubCategory_2/Product?page=1 to /SubCategory_2.php
/foo/bar/baz/qux?something to /baz.php
You can test it here using this htaccess tester.
UPDATE:
unfortunately without success. I get 404 error.
You'll get a 404 if the directive did not match the requested URL, or /SubCategory_2.php does not exist.
Is the URL redirected? What do you see in the browser's address bar?
If there was no redirect then the above rule did not match the requested URL and the rule did nothing. Either because:
The URL format is not as stated in the question.
The rule is in the wrong place in the .htaccess file. As stated, this rule needs to be near the top of the config file.
I found a basic solution here htaccess redirect if URL contains a certain string I crate something like this RewriteRule ^(.*)SubCategory_2(.*)$ https://example.com/SubCategory_2.php[L,R=301] and works just fine. My problem is that this is a "static solution" since "SubCategory_2" is a variable.
Ok, but that is a very generic (arguably "too generic") solution for the problem you appear to be attempting to solve. This matches "SubCategory_2" anywhere in the URL-path (not just whole path segments) and preserves any query string (present on your example URL) through the redirect. So, this would not perform the stated redirect on the example URL in your question.
However, the directive you've posted (which you say "works just fine") cannot possibly work as written, at least not by itself. Ignoring the missing space (a typo I assume) before the flags argument, this would result in an endless redirect loop, since the target URL /SubCategory_2.php also matches the regex ^(.*)SubCategory_2(.*)$.
Also, should this be a 301 (permanent) redirect? You seem to imply this is a "temporary" solution?
HOWEVER, it's not technically possible to make "SubCategory_2" entirely variable in this "basic solution" and search for this variable "something" in a larger string and redirect to "something.php". How do you know that you have found the correct part of a much larger URL? You need to be more specific about what you are searching for.
In your original question you are extracting the 3rd path segment in a URL-path that consists of 4 path segments and a query string. That is a perfectly reasonable pattern, but you can't extract "something" when you don't know what or where "something" is.
Instead of having all the new favicon formats placed into the root directory of my website, I am placing them inside a subfolder.
To conform to the standards, as some browsers / device versions do not use the path as directed inside the html meta tags, but instead try to get the file from the website root anyway, I am creating a rewrite rule to redirect all these files to the actual location - but ONLY these files.
What I have come up with so far is the following :
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/((apple\-touch\-icon|android\-chrome|favicon|mstile)-([0-9]+)x([0-9]+).png|manifest\.json|browserconfig\.xml|favicon\.ico|(apple\-touch\-icon\-precomposed|apple\-touch\-icon).png|safari-pinned-tab.svg)$ /favicon/$1 [L]
This should match all of the following files :
When testing the rule at this site, the rule is not matched (see pic):
I would like to keep this rule on the same line, and due to the size standards changing, I wish to keep this dynamic (aka, instead of specifying each individual file, use a mask as I attempted to do). I suspect something with my regex is off.
Please assist or provide a solution with the corrected regex pattern for what I am intending to achieve.
Modern favicons + Rewrite
Following is a fairly robust pattern for mapping the modern favicon's using rewrite.
Regex pattern, for reference
^(browserconfig.xml|manifest.json|safari-pinned-tab.svg|(android-chrome|favicon|mstile)-[0-9]+x[0-9]+.png|apple-touch-icon(-precompressed.png|-[0-9]+x[0-9]+.png|.png)|manifest.json)$
Usage: apply it to a rewrite rule (htaccess)
This example assumes the rewrite destination where the favicon's are placed is a folder named favicon (or whatever folder you wish).
RewriteRule ^(browserconfig.xml|manifest.json|safari-pinned-tab.svg|(android-chrome|favicon|mstile)-[0-9]+x[0-9]+.png|apple-touch-icon(-precompressed.png|-[0-9]+x[0-9]+.png|.png)|manifest.json)$ /favicon/$1 [L]
I don't think this will work.
For one thing, its "precomposed" not "precompressed"
It looks like you're evaluating 'manifest.json' twice
Also, I don't know of any icons that show single-digit sizes; they
would be really tiny, e.g., apple-touch-icon-precomposed-1x1. They
are all 2 or 3 digits, e.g.,
apple-touch-icon-114x114-precomposed.png or favicon-16x16.ico
Cheers!
I've looked at many examples here and all over the internet, but I can't seem to find an answer I understand, or that accurately solves my problem. I'm looking to implement a mod_rewrite directive in an .htaccess file that renames a folder to another name but does not show the name in the url bar.
For example (the user clicks a link that directs them to):
theSite.com/folder1/folder2/folder3/
I want them to see (same as above)
theSite.com/folder1/folder2/folder3/
But I want the browser to silently function in this directory
theSite.com/folder1/some_other_folder/folder3/
I am a PHP developer, writing my first web application. I can configure apache, PHP, mysql and use them like a pro. I'm sorry, but I don't understand the syntax for mod_rewrite. I can't seem to grasp it despite looking at many tutorials as I would need to ask questions before I could move onto the next concept. Thank you for your patience.
Your case is pretty run-of-the-mill. You just need to match the static string, plus a (.*) to match everything that follows it and store it into $1, then substitue some_other_folder.
The [L] flag (and absence of the [R] flag) instructs Apache to rewrite internally without redirecting the browser, and to stop here without matching further rules.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^folder1/folder2/folder3(.*)$ folder1/some_other_folder/folder3$1 [L]
If folder3 itself is part of the "dynamic" portion, that is, anything after folder2 should be silently rewritten into some_other_folder, leave folder3 out of the rule and just capture everything that follows folder2 into $1.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^folder1/folder2/(.*)$ folder1/some_other_folder/$1 [L]
I would use following
RewriteRule /folder1/folder2/folder3/ /folder1/some_other_folder/folder3/ [L]
Let's say I have the following filesystem setup on my webserver:
/www/web/foo/widget.php
...
/www/app/mvc/controllers/WidgetController.php
I need to figure out how to use mod_rewrite to map page requests (and their respective GET/POST data) for widget.php to its controller WidgetController.php.
It looks like mod_rewrite is super-powerful and thus complex. Is there a quick and easy way for someone to explain to me how to accomplish this? What files do I have to change? Can someone show me a sample rule for this "widget" example?
Thanks!
Nothing is quick and easy.
Setup
First you must make sure that you have the package installed
To use mod_rewrite, you need to load the extension. Usually, this is done by inmporting the rewrite.so module in the apache2 global configuration (/etc/apache2/apache2.conf)
Usually all mod_rewrite instruction are written in the virtual host definition. (Say: /etc/apache2/site-available/000default)
Usage
First step
To enable rewrite for one site, you have to ask for it with :
RewriteEngine On
Then you can begin to write rules. The basic you need to write rules is describe by the following diagram :
(See also : How does url rewrite works?)
To help me understand how it works, always consider it from the server side (not client side).
You receive an URL from the client. This URL has a certain format that you had defined. (E.g. http://blog.com/article/myarticle-about-a-certain-topic). But apache can't understand this by himself, so we need to help him. We know that the controller is page.php and can look up article by name.
Getting information
So now we forge a regex to extract information from the URL. All regex are matched against what is following your domain name (here : article/myarticle-about-a-certain-topic without the first / -- It can be written though on recent version of rewrite)
Here we need the article's name: ^article/(.*)$ will do the job of matching URL against article/<something> and capturing <something> into $1. (For characters meaning, I advise you to look a tutorial on regex. Here ^ is beginning of the string, invisible position after the .com/, and $ the end of the URL)
So now we need to informe apache that this URL means http://myblog.com/page.php?article=myarticle-about-a-certain-topic
This is achieved by using a RewriteRule
RewriteRule ^article/(.*)$ page.php?article=$1
Restricting to conditions
To go a bit on advance topics, you may want to apply this rule only if the article name is fetch by GET method. To do this, you can include a RewriteCond like
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET
It goes BEFORE a RewriteRule in the file but is tested AFTER it.
Flags
If you are making lot of redirection/rewrite, you will have to understand flags
The most used are [L] and [R]. A little explanation on those :
[R] ask for redirection, it can be tuned like [R=302] where 302 is a redirection status number of the HTTP protocol. This will force the client to make a new request with the rewritten URL. Therefore he will see the rewritten URL in his address bar.
[L] forces apache to stop treating rules. Be advise that it does mean that the current incoming URL will stop being modified, but the rewritten URL WILL go again through the process of rewriting. Keep this in mind if you want to avoid loops.
Conclusion
So you end up with the following block of instructions
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET
RewriteRule ^article/(.*)$ page.php?article=$1
See also
You can find additional resources here :
A basic tester http://martinmelin.se/rewrite-rule-tester/
Cheat sheet : http://www.ranzs.com/?p=43
Query_String examples : http://statichtml.com/2010/mod-rewrite-baseon-on-query-string.html
Tips : http://www.noupe.com/php/10-mod_rewrite-rules-you-should-know.html and http://www.ranzs.com/?p=35
One of my clients (before I came along) decided to use htaccess redirects as their form of URL shortening/search engine friendly URLs. They have literally thousands of them.
The new version of the site now has friendly urls but they aren't equivalent to their redirects so they still need them.
My question to you all is: Is there another way than to populate this file with thousands of lines of "Redirects /folder1 /folder2"?
Thanks
If you cannot make simple rules to catch all of them as in the #chris henry solution you can use the RewriteMap utility of mod_rewrite. You'll be able to write these thousand rules in a text file, then make this text file an hash file, and mode_rewrite will try to match url in this file (if it's an hash file it's quite fast). After that mode_rewwrite can generate a redirect 301 with the [L,R=301] tag.
Yep, look at using the Apache config (httpd.conf or httpd-vhosts.conf) to set up site wide folder aliasing. Eg:
Alias /folder1 c:/www/folder2
Look at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#directory for more info.
Depending on how different the URLs being redirected are, one solution might be to come up with an rewrite rule that covers all of them, and maintain the short / long URLs in your application, or even a database.