Apache mod rewrite simple redirect

Question

I want requests to my site to work as follows:

http://example.com/ would pull up the index.php file (the current default behavior) ideally without displaying the index.php

http://example.com/foo.php would pull up foo.php as would be expected

http://example.com/blerg would redirect to http://example.com/bar.php?code=blerg

I have the following rewrite rules right now

    RewriteRule ^/(.*\.(php|html|htm|css|jpg))$ /$1 [NC,L]
    RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /bar.php?code=$1 [NC,L]

which almost works, except http://example.com/ pulls up bar.php instead of index.php

Ideally I wouldn't have to have every possible file extension in the first rule, I would rather it just detect if it's an actual file.

Answer 1

Assuming this is in .htaccess and not the apache conf file, theres no / at the front of the first part of a rewrite rule. So if you want to map:

http://example.com/blah.jpg

you do:

RewriteRule ^blah\.jpg$ /some_other_file.jpg [L]

Note the lack of a leading / and the escaping of the period (.) otherwise it matches any character (eg without it, the rule would match blahxjpg).

Also if you're redirecting something that is otherwise a directory, you may find the client or the server puts a trailing slash. To deal with it I typically just do this::

RewriteRule ^directory/?$ /some_other_directory/index.php [L]

or similar.

That last point relates to:

RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /bar.php?code=$1 [NC,L]

Basically change it to:

RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ /bar.php?code=$1 [NC,L]

and I think it'll sort it out.

Answer 2

Use a RewriteCond directive in front of the second rule so that it only matches the URLs you want, e.g.:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/blerg$
RewriteRule ...

Answer 3

Add a rule that intercepts the http://example.com/ request and prevents the last rule from running:

RewriteRule ^/(.*\.(php|html|htm|css|jpg))$ /$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^/$ /index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /bar.php?code=$1 [NC,L]

I generally add QSA ("query string append") to my rules, as well: [QSA,L].

This rule set forces requests to non-existent files to go through a handler script:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /handler.php?request=$1 [QSA,L]

Answer 4

Not exactly what you've asked for I realise, but I often use this in .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php

..to send anything that isn't an actual file or directory to index.php, which then contains logic to interpret whatever's in the URL string.

e.g.

$url_array = split('/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
array_shift($url_array); // remove first value as it's empty

Answer 5

Found a solution that works

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/([^.]+)$ /bar.php?code=$1 [QSA,L]

http://example.com/ directs to index.php properly (without showing index.php)
http://example.com/abc directs to bar.php?code=abc
http://example.com/foo.php operates normally.