Rewrite URL Rewriting Guide

This document supplements the mod_rewrite reference documentation. It describes how one can use Apache's mod_rewrite to solve typical URL-based problems with which webmasters are commonly confronted. We give detailed descriptions on how to solve each problem by configuring URL rewriting rulesets.

ATTENTION: Depending on your server configuration it may be necessary to slightly change the examples for your situation, e.g. adding the [PT] flag when additionally using mod_alias and mod_userdir, etc. Or rewriting a ruleset to fit in .htaccess context instead of per-server context. Always try to understand what a particular ruleset really does before you use it. This avoids many problems. Module documentation mod_rewrite introduction Advanced Rewrite Guide - advanced useful examples Technical details
Moved <code>DocumentRoot</code>
Description:

Usually the DocumentRoot of the webserver directly relates to the URL "/". But often this data is not really of top-level priority. For example, you may wish for visitors, on first entering a site, to go to a particular subdirectory /about/. This may be accomplished using the following ruleset:

Solution:

We redirect the URL / to /about/: 

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   ^/$  /about/  [R]

Note that this can also be handled using the RedirectMatch directive:

RedirectMatch ^/$ http://example.com/about/

Note also that the example rewrites only the root URL. That is, it rewrites a request for http://example.com/, but not a request for http://example.com/page.html. If you have in fact changed your document root - that is, if all of your content is in fact in that subdirectory, it is greatly preferable to simply change your DocumentRoot directive, rather than rewriting URLs.

Trailing Slash Problem
Description:

The vast majority of "trailing slash" problems can be dealt with using the techniques discussed in the FAQ entry. However, occasionally, there is a need to use mod_rewrite to handle a case where a missing trailing slash causes a URL to fail. This can happen, for example, after a series of complex rewrite rules.

Solution:

The solution to this subtle problem is to let the server add the trailing slash automatically. To do this correctly we have to use an external redirect, so the browser correctly requests subsequent images etc. If we only did a internal rewrite, this would only work for the directory page, but would go wrong when any images are included into this page with relative URLs, because the browser would request an in-lined object. For instance, a request for image.gif in /~quux/foo/index.html would become /~quux/image.gif without the external redirect!

So, to do this trick we write:

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^foo$  foo/  [R]

Alternately, you can put the following in a top-level .htaccess file in the content directory. But note that this creates some processing overhead.

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteCond    %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  -d
RewriteRule    ^(.+[^/])$           $1/  [R]
Set Environment Variables According To URL Parts
Description:

Perhaps you want to keep status information between requests and use the URL to encode it. But you don't want to use a CGI wrapper for all pages just to strip out this information.

Solution:

We use a rewrite rule to strip out the status information and remember it via an environment variable which can be later dereferenced from within XSSI or CGI. This way a URL /foo/S=java/bar/ gets translated to /foo/bar/ and the environment variable named STATUS is set to the value "java".

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   ^(.*)/S=([^/]+)/(.*)    $1/$3 [E=STATUS:$2]
Redirect Homedirs For Foreigners
Description:

We want to redirect homedir URLs to another webserver www.somewhere.com when the requesting user does not stay in the local domain ourdomain.com. This is sometimes used in virtual host contexts.

Solution:

Just a rewrite condition:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{REMOTE_HOST}  !^.+\.ourdomain\.com$
RewriteRule   ^(/~.+)         http://www.somewhere.com/$1 [R,L]
Redirecting Anchors
Description:

By default, redirecting to an HTML anchor doesn't work, because mod_rewrite escapes the # character, turning it into %23. This, in turn, breaks the redirection.

Solution:

Use the [NE] flag on the RewriteRule. NE stands for No Escape.

Time-Dependent Rewriting
Description:

When tricks like time-dependent content should happen a lot of webmasters still use CGI scripts which do for instance redirects to specialized pages. How can it be done via mod_rewrite?

Solution:

There are a lot of variables named TIME_xxx for rewrite conditions. In conjunction with the special lexicographic comparison patterns <STRING, >STRING and =STRING we can do time-dependent redirects:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} >0700
RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} <1900
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.day.html
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.night.html

This provides the content of foo.day.html under the URL foo.html from 07:01-18:59 and at the remaining time the contents of foo.night.html. Just a nice feature for a homepage...

mod_cache, intermediate proxies and browsers may each cache responses and cause the either page to be shown outside of the time-window configured. mod_expires may be used to control this effect.
Structured Homedirs
Description:

Some sites with thousands of users use a structured homedir layout, i.e. each homedir is in a subdirectory which begins (for instance) with the first character of the username. So, /~foo/anypath is /home/f/foo/.www/anypath while /~bar/anypath is /home/b/bar/.www/anypath.

Solution:

We use the following ruleset to expand the tilde URLs into the above layout.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   ^/~(([a-z])[a-z0-9]+)(.*)  /home/$2/$1/.www$3
Dynamic Mirror
Description:

Assume there are nice web pages on remote hosts we want to bring into our namespace. For FTP servers we would use the mirror program which actually maintains an explicit up-to-date copy of the remote data on the local machine. For a web server we could use the program webcopy which runs via HTTP. But both techniques have a major drawback: The local copy is always only as up-to-date as the last time we ran the program. It would be much better if the mirror was not a static one we have to establish explicitly. Instead we want a dynamic mirror with data which gets updated automatically as needed on the remote host(s).

Solution:

To provide this feature we map the remote web page or even the complete remote web area to our namespace by the use of the Proxy Throughput feature (flag [P]):

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^hotsheet/(.*)$  http://www.tstimpreso.com/hotsheet/$1  [P]

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^usa-news\.html$   http://www.quux-corp.com/news/index.html  [P]
Retrieve Missing Data from Intranet
Description:

This is a tricky way of virtually running a corporate (external) Internet web server (www.quux-corp.dom), while actually keeping and maintaining its data on an (internal) Intranet web server (www2.quux-corp.dom) which is protected by a firewall. The trick is that the external web server retrieves the requested data on-the-fly from the internal one.

Solution:

First, we must make sure that our firewall still protects the internal web server and only the external web server is allowed to retrieve data from it. On a packet-filtering firewall, for instance, we could configure a firewall ruleset like the following:

ALLOW Host www.quux-corp.dom Port >1024 --> Host www2.quux-corp.dom Port 80
DENY  Host *                 Port *     --> Host www2.quux-corp.dom Port 80

Just adjust it to your actual configuration syntax. Now we can establish the mod_rewrite rules which request the missing data in the background through the proxy throughput feature:

RewriteRule ^/~([^/]+)/?(.*)          /home/$1/.www/$2 [C]
# REQUEST_FILENAME usage below is correct in this per-server context example 
# because the rule that references REQUEST_FILENAME is chained to a rule that
# sets REQUEST_FILENAME. 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}       !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}       !-d
RewriteRule ^/home/([^/]+)/.www/?(.*) http://www2.quux-corp.dom/~$1/pub/$2 [P]
New MIME-type, New Service
Description:

On the net there are many nifty CGI programs. But their usage is usually boring, so a lot of webmasters don't use them. Even Apache's Action handler feature for MIME-types is only appropriate when the CGI programs don't need special URLs (actually PATH_INFO and QUERY_STRINGS) as their input. First, let us configure a new file type with extension .scgi (for secure CGI) which will be processed by the popular cgiwrap program. The problem here is that for instance if we use a Homogeneous URL Layout (see above) a file inside the user homedirs might have a URL like /u/user/foo/bar.scgi, but cgiwrap needs URLs in the form /~user/foo/bar.scgi/. The following rule solves the problem:

RewriteRule ^/[uge]/([^/]+)/\.www/(.+)\.scgi(.*) ...
... /internal/cgi/user/cgiwrap/~$1/$2.scgi$3  [NS,T=application/x-http-cgi]

Or assume we have some more nifty programs: wwwlog (which displays the access.log for a URL subtree) and wwwidx (which runs Glimpse on a URL subtree). We have to provide the URL area to these programs so they know which area they are really working with. But usually this is complicated, because they may still be requested by the alternate URL form, i.e., typically we would run the swwidx program from within /u/user/foo/ via hyperlink to

/internal/cgi/user/swwidx?i=/u/user/foo/

which is ugly, because we have to hard-code both the location of the area and the location of the CGI inside the hyperlink. When we have to reorganize, we spend a lot of time changing the various hyperlinks.

Solution:

The solution here is to provide a special new URL format which automatically leads to the proper CGI invocation. We configure the following:

RewriteRule   ^/([uge])/([^/]+)(/?.*)/\*  /internal/cgi/user/wwwidx?i=/$1/$2$3/
RewriteRule   ^/([uge])/([^/]+)(/?.*):log /internal/cgi/user/wwwlog?f=/$1/$2$3

Now the hyperlink to search at /u/user/foo/ reads only

HREF="*"

which internally gets automatically transformed to

/internal/cgi/user/wwwidx?i=/u/user/foo/

The same approach leads to an invocation for the access log CGI program when the hyperlink :log gets used.

Document With Autorefresh
Description:

Wouldn't it be nice, while creating a complex web page, if the web browser would automatically refresh the page every time we save a new version from within our editor? Impossible?

Solution:

No! We just combine the MIME multipart feature, the web server NPH feature, and the URL manipulation power of mod_rewrite. First, we establish a new URL feature: Adding just :refresh to any URL causes the 'page' to be refreshed every time it is updated on the filesystem.

RewriteRule   ^(/[uge]/[^/]+/?.*):refresh  /internal/cgi/apache/nph-refresh?f=$1

Now when we reference the URL

/u/foo/bar/page.html:refresh

this leads to the internal invocation of the URL

/internal/cgi/apache/nph-refresh?f=/u/foo/bar/page.html

The only missing part is the NPH-CGI script. Although one would usually say "left as an exercise to the reader" ;-) I will provide this, too.

#!/sw/bin/perl
##
##  nph-refresh -- NPH/CGI script for auto refreshing pages
##  Copyright (c) 1997 Ralf S. Engelschall, All Rights Reserved.
##
$| = 1;

#   split the QUERY_STRING variable
@pairs = split(/&/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
foreach $pair (@pairs) {
    ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
    $name =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
    $name = 'QS_' . $name;
    $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
    eval "\$$name = \"$value\"";
}
$QS_s = 1 if ($QS_s eq '');
$QS_n = 3600 if ($QS_n eq '');
if ($QS_f eq '') {
    print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "&lt;b&gt;ERROR&lt;/b&gt;: No file given\n";
    exit(0);
}
if (! -f $QS_f) {
    print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "&lt;b&gt;ERROR&lt;/b&gt;: File $QS_f not found\n";
    exit(0);
}

sub print_http_headers_multipart_begin {
    print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
    $bound = "ThisRandomString12345";
    print "Content-type: multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary=$bound\n";
    &print_http_headers_multipart_next;
}

sub print_http_headers_multipart_next {
    print "\n--$bound\n";
}

sub print_http_headers_multipart_end {
    print "\n--$bound--\n";
}

sub displayhtml {
    local($buffer) = @_;
    $len = length($buffer);
    print "Content-type: text/html\n";
    print "Content-length: $len\n\n";
    print $buffer;
}

sub readfile {
    local($file) = @_;
    local(*FP, $size, $buffer, $bytes);
    ($x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $size) = stat($file);
    $size = sprintf("%d", $size);
    open(FP, "&lt;$file");
    $bytes = sysread(FP, $buffer, $size);
    close(FP);
    return $buffer;
}

$buffer = &readfile($QS_f);
&print_http_headers_multipart_begin;
&displayhtml($buffer);

sub mystat {
    local($file) = $_[0];
    local($time);

    ($x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $mtime) = stat($file);
    return $mtime;
}

$mtimeL = &mystat($QS_f);
$mtime = $mtime;
for ($n = 0; $n &lt; $QS_n; $n++) {
    while (1) {
        $mtime = &mystat($QS_f);
        if ($mtime ne $mtimeL) {
            $mtimeL = $mtime;
            sleep(2);
            $buffer = &readfile($QS_f);
            &print_http_headers_multipart_next;
            &displayhtml($buffer);
            sleep(5);
            $mtimeL = &mystat($QS_f);
            last;
        }
        sleep($QS_s);
    }
}

&print_http_headers_multipart_end;

exit(0);

##EOF##
Mass Virtual Hosting
Description:

The VirtualHost feature of Apache is nice and works great when you just have a few dozen virtual hosts. But when you are an ISP and have hundreds of virtual hosts, this feature is suboptimal.

Solution:

To provide this feature we map the remote web page or even the complete remote web area to our namespace using the Proxy Throughput feature (flag [P]):

##
##  vhost.map
##
www.vhost1.dom:80  /path/to/docroot/vhost1
www.vhost2.dom:80  /path/to/docroot/vhost2
     :
www.vhostN.dom:80  /path/to/docroot/vhostN

##
##  httpd.conf
##
    :
#   use the canonical hostname on redirects, etc.
UseCanonicalName on

    :
#   add the virtual host in front of the CLF-format
CustomLog  /path/to/access_log  "%{VHOST}e %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b"
    :

#   enable the rewriting engine in the main server
RewriteEngine on

#   define two maps: one for fixing the URL and one which defines
#   the available virtual hosts with their corresponding
#   DocumentRoot.
RewriteMap    lowercase    int:tolower
RewriteMap    vhost        txt:/path/to/vhost.map

#   Now do the actual virtual host mapping
#   via a huge and complicated single rule:
#
#   1. make sure we don't map for common locations
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/commonurl1/.*
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/commonurl2/.*
    :
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/commonurlN/.*
#
#   2. make sure we have a Host header, because
#      currently our approach only supports
#      virtual hosting through this header
RewriteCond   %{HTTP_HOST}  !^$
#
#   3. lowercase the hostname
RewriteCond   ${lowercase:%{HTTP_HOST}|NONE}  ^(.+)$
#
#   4. lookup this hostname in vhost.map and
#      remember it only when it is a path
#      (and not "NONE" from above)
RewriteCond   ${vhost:%1}  ^(/.*)$
#
#   5. finally we can map the URL to its docroot location
#      and remember the virtual host for logging purposes
RewriteRule   ^/(.*)$   %1/$1  [E=VHOST:${lowercase:%{HTTP_HOST}}]
    :
Proxy Deny
Description:

How can we forbid a certain host or even a user of a special host from using the Apache proxy?

Solution:

We first have to make sure mod_rewrite is below(!) mod_proxy in the Configuration file when compiling the Apache web server. This way it gets called before mod_proxy. Then we configure the following for a host-dependent deny...

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} ^badhost\.mydomain\.com$
RewriteRule !^http://[^/.]\.mydomain.com.*  - [F]

...and this one for a user@host-dependent deny:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_IDENT}@%{REMOTE_HOST}  ^badguy@badhost\.mydomain\.com$
RewriteRule !^http://[^/.]\.mydomain.com.*  - [F]
Referer-based Deflector
Description:

How can we program a flexible URL Deflector which acts on the "Referer" HTTP header and can be configured with as many referring pages as we like?

Solution:

Use the following really tricky ruleset...

RewriteMap  deflector txt:/path/to/deflector.map

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=""
RewriteCond ${deflector:%{HTTP_REFERER}} ^-$
RewriteRule ^.* %{HTTP_REFERER} [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=""
RewriteCond ${deflector:%{HTTP_REFERER}|NOT-FOUND} !=NOT-FOUND
RewriteRule ^.* ${deflector:%{HTTP_REFERER}} [R,L]

... in conjunction with a corresponding rewrite map:

##
##  deflector.map
##

http://www.badguys.com/bad/index.html    -
http://www.badguys.com/bad/index2.html   -
http://www.badguys.com/bad/index3.html   http://somewhere.com/

This automatically redirects the request back to the referring page (when "-" is used as the value in the map) or to a specific URL (when an URL is specified in the map as the second argument).