how to use .htaccess to silently read from the cache, if the file exists? is this possible?

Question

Hi,

i have this file structure:

/
/index.php
/test.php

/example/foo/bar/test.php

/cache/index.htm
/cache/test.htm
/cache/foo/bar/test.htm

everything in /cache/* is a flat file (.htm) of the generated php files.

Basically what i want to do is this -

• a user requests /index.htm (users will never see a .php in their url even if its made on the fly)
• .htaccess checks if /cache/index.htm exists. if so, it reads from that file.
• if /cache/index.htm doesn't exist, it serves index.php

another example

• a user requests /example/foo/bar/test.htm
• if /cache/example/foo/bar/test.htm exists, it reads from it
• if it doesn't exist, the user is shown /example/foo/bar/test.php (but doesn't see the .php extension)

is this possible at all in .htaccess?

thanks

(btw i make the cache files elsewhere. so no need to making them on the fly)

Answer 1

Assuming the only kind of check you want to do is an existence check, it should be possible with the following mod_rewrite rule set:

RewriteEngine On

# Check if a PHP page was requested
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\s/[^\s]+\.php
# If so, redirect to the non-cache .htm version
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.php$ /$1.htm [R=301,L]

# Check if the file exists in the cache
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/cache/$0 -f
# If it does, rewrite to the cache file
RewriteRule ^.*$ /cache/$0 [L]

# Check that the file doesn't exist (we didn't go to the cache)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# Check that the request hasn't been rewritten to the PHP file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.php$
# If both are true, rewrite to the PHP file
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.htm$ /$1.php