.htaccess mod-rewrite conflicting with subfolder auth

Question

I have a site which redirects all requests for files/folders which don't exist to an index file using .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d 
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule !admin/* index.php [NC,L]

There is a folder "admin/" which has the following in .htaccess for auth:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "admin"
AuthUserFile "/path/to/passwd"
require valid-user

Adding the auth .htaccess file in "admin/" causes the request to be trapped by mod-rewrite instead of providing the authentication response. I've tried a few different things trying to work around this (including this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1641666/htaccess-rewrite-and-auth-conflict), but couldn't get any purchase.

Thanks.

EDIT: If I'm already authenticated, the rewrite rule works allowing me to access the "admin/" folder. So it seems that it's the authentication challenge that's doing something wonky.

Answer 1

when you say you tried the solution from the other post, what did your code look like?

Something like this:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/admin/

I don't see why that wouldn't work.

Answer 2

Let me suggest a simplified form for the rewriting rules:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
RewriteRule !^admin/ index.php [NC,L]

This incorporates Matthew's suggestion of checking the path against /admin/ (in .htaccess files you omit the leading slash).

You might also need to use a

RewriteBase /

before the first RewriteCond line.