How do I mod rewrite an entire site excluding a couple of subdirectories?

Question

I've got a small problem. I've got a good setup which mod rewrites all requests to the site - the only thing is it also rewrites directories which I don't want to be included.

I'm using this code in my .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?section=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?section=$1&page=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?section=$1&page=$2&split=$3 [L]

Ideally I'd like to be able to exclude two directories - access/ and edit/ - edit/ also needs to have it's own set of rules:

RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?action=$1 [L]

I can get around this problem by linking directly to the .php file in either directory, but this isn't ideal.

Any advice?

Answer 1

Use RewriteCond

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(access|edit)/
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?section=$1 [L]
...

(This is untested, but it should be close)

Answer 2

An alternate idea (also untested):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/access/ - [L]
RewriteRule ^/edit/([^/\.]+)/?$ /edit/index.php?action=$1 [L]
... (other rules)

which would save you from having to repeat the RewriteCond before every rule.