ReWriteRule Apache, php

Question

Hello,

I want to be able to redirect the user when they type in http://example.com/user/user-name to http://example.com/user/user-name, which displays user details

This is what I am using but it gives me errors

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^.*$ /user/ [R]

The error which firefox gives is

Redirect Loop

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is redirecting the request in a way that will never complete.

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Thanks

Answer 1

are those two urls not the same?

Edit: when i replied, the question only stated the need, not the error

Answer 2

You indeed have a redirect loop. You are trying to go from domain.com/user/user-name to domain.com/user/user-name (the SAME URL). What happens is:

1. User accesses domain.com/user/user-name.
2. User is redirected to domain.com/user/user-name (the same location).
3. User is redirected again to domain.com/user/user-name (the same location).
4. User is redirected again to domain.com/user/user-name (the same location).
5. Repeat ad nauseum...

Perhaps you meant to redirect domain.com/user/user-name to domain.com/users.php?u=user or something?

Answer 3

You're redirecting everything to /user/ including itself.

Edit: Every request runs through the same set of rewrites, and since your regex of ^.*$ matches you'll redirect /user/ to /user/ again. The browser is just helping you out by stopping the loop after a few attempts on the same URL.

If you're looking to redirect /a/foo to /b/foo, you need something like:

RewriteRule ^/a/(.*)$ /b/$1 [R]

..but you need to have the source and destination not overlap as in your initial example, or you'll get an infinite redirect loop.

Answer 4

As the others already said, the RewriteRule matches any URI path (including /user/) and thus lead into an infinite loop.

To avoid this you have to exclude this URI path:

# either
RewriteRule !^/user/$ /user/ [R]
# or
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/user/$
RewriteRule ^ /user/ [R]

These rules redirect every URI path that is not matched by ^/user/$ to /user/. If you want to use this rule in a .htaccess file, you have to remove the leading slash in the pattern of the RewriteRule directive (so just ^user/$).