Could somebody assist me in formulating the following .htaccess rule:
if an incoming request contains a top-level directory path like
www.example.com/dirname
automatically convert this to
www.example.com/dirname/
but only for the top level, so requests to
www.example.com/dirname/subdirname
remain untouched.
Do I need mod_rewrite for this, or is there a simpler way?
You could use the Alias directive if the amount of directives is small enough. Otherwise you would have to go with mod_rewrite and some simple rules.
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)$ /$1/ [L]
To rewrite a URL, you need to use mod_rewrite. In this case, I would go with something that looks for anything after the initial / that isn't ? . # / and add a / after that. Maybe some other SO's will point out other tokens that I am leaving out.
RewriteRule ^([^/./?//#]+)?$ $1/ [L]