How does RewriteBase work in .htaccess

Question

I have seen this in a few .htaccess examples

RewriteBase /

It appears to be somewhat similiar in functionality to the <base href=""> of HTML.

I believe it will automaticlally prepend it's value to the begining of RewriteRule statements (possibly ones without a leading slash)?

I could not get it to work properly. I think it's use could come in very handy for site portability, as I often have a development server which is different to a production one. My current method leaves me deleting portions out of my RewriteRule statements.

Can anyone explain to me briefly how to implement it?

Thanks

Answer 1

It doesn't prepend, it replaces the relative path.

You really should just carefully read the docs.

Answer 2

In my own words, after reading the docs and experimenting...

You can use RewriteBase to provide a base for your rewrites. Consider this...

# invoke rewrite engine
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /~new/

# add trailing slash if missing
    rewriteRule ^(([a-z0-9\-]+/)*[a-z0-9\-]+)$ $1/ [NC,R=301,L]

This is a real rule I use to ensure that URLs have a trailing slash. IMO, it looks neater. This will convert http://www.example.com/~new/page to http://www.example.com/~new/page/. By having the RewriteBase there, you make the relative path come off the RewriteBase parameter.