Using relative URLs with mod_rewrite

Question

Environment: Apache 2 shipped with Mac OS X Leopard; with no big changes in the default httpd.conf.

I am setting up some rewrites through my .htaccess but I am not able to use target paths relative to the current directory.

# URL: http://localhost/~davis/rewrite/.htaccess
# File: /Users/davis/Sites/rewrite/.htaccess

RewriteRule go.php target.php

# Not working

I am expecting the rule to redirect users to http://localhost/~davis/rewrite/target.php. It's resolving to the correct physical path but gives me a 404 saying that the path /Users/davis/Sites/rewrite/target.php does not exist.

It works all good if I give the full URL.

# URL: http://localhost/~davis/rewrite/.htaccess
# File: /Users/davis/Sites/rewrite/.htaccess

RewriteRule go.php /~davis/rewrite/target.php

# Works

Am I missing something here? Anything to be setup in httpd.conf?

Thanks!

Edit: The relative URLs are working properly on my live Linux server. It's in my local Mac box that I am having problems.

Answer 1

Try to adjust the base URL:

RewriteBase /~davis/rewrite/

Answer 2

You can try RewriteBase, but other than that I don't think there's anything you can do.

RewriteBase /~davis/rewrite/

Answer 3

Got it resolved, finally!

It starts working if I set DocumentRoot to my ~/Sites directory or create a VirtualHost for that path. Apparently in the user directory setup, Apache was not able to map the physical path to the ~username alias.

Thanks everyone for your inputs!

Answer 4

Can you explain that solution in more detail?