What's wrong with my RewriteRule?

Question

My .htaccess file currently looks like this

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Options +FollowSymLinks
Options +Indexes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^account$ /account/orders.php [L]

When I go to http://mywebsite.com/account it properly shows the page at http://mywebsite.com/account/orders.php. But when I change the RewriteRule to

RewriteRule ^account/orders$ /account/orders.php [L]

and then I go to http://mywebsite.com/account/orders, I get Error 404 Page Not Found. What did I do wrong?

**Additional Details**

I finally diagnosed the problem. But I don't understand why my solution works. Consider the scenario where account/orders.php exists.

The following rule will not work

RewriteRule ^account/orders$ account/orders.php [L]

The following rule will work

RewriteRule ^account/order$ account/orders.php [L]

Ie., the rewrite rule will fail if the Pattern evaluates to an existing file. So when the pattern is the same as the substitution, but minus the extension, the rewrite rule will fail. If I add a file called account/order.php, then both rules will fail.

Why does this happen?

Answer 1

Strange, it seems ok to me... If you have access to Apache Configuration try to enable RewriteLog and RewriteLogLevel for some debug...

Also take a look in the site's log files (always if you have access)

Answer 2

I don't see how your first example would work, because I believe that intial slashes are also passed on.

RewriteRule ^/account/orders$ /account/orders.php [L]

Answer 3

Have you tried a relative path?

RewriteRule ^account/orders$ account/orders.php [L]

---

Edit   You should also make sure to have MultiViews disabled. This causes that Apache does some additional vague file matching to find similar named files and thus /account/orders would be mapped to /account/orders.php before it’s passed to mod_rewrite.

Answer 4

I would at first try to add a redirect to my rules, so I can see in the browser what is happening on the server.

RewriteRule ^account$ /account/orders.php [L,R]

Also make sure that there are no other rules (previous ones) interfering, just in case you are not showing all of your .htaccess file here.

Answer 5

I'm answering my own question because I finally diagnosed the problem. But I don't understand why my solution works. Consider the scenario where account/orders.php exists.

The following rule will not work

RewriteRule ^account/orders$ account/orders.php [L]

The following rule will work

RewriteRule ^account/order$ account/orders.php [L]

Ie., the rewrite rule will fail if the Pattern evaluates to an existing file. So when the pattern is the same as the substitution, but minus the extension, the rewrite rule will fail. If I add a file called account/order.php, then both rules will fail.

Why does this happen?