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<!DOCTYPE manualpage SYSTEM "/style/manualpage.dtd">

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="/style/manual.en.xsl"?>

<manualpage metafile="rewrite_guide.xml.meta">

<parentdocument href="/index.html" />

<title>URL Rewriting Guide</title>

<summary>

<p>This document supplements the <module>mod_rewrite</module>

<a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">reference documentation</a>.

It describes how one can use Apache's <module>mod_rewrite</module>

to solve typical URL-based problems with which webmasters are

commonony confronted. We give detailed descriptions on how to

solve each problem by configuring URL rewriting rulesets.</p>

<note type="warning">ATTENTION: Depending on your server configuration

it may be necessary to slightly change the examples for your

situation, e.g. adding the <code>[PT]</code> flag when

additionally using <module>mod_alias</module> and

<module>mod_userdir</module>, etc. Or rewriting a ruleset

to fit in <code>.htaccess</code> context instead

of per-server context. Always try to understand what a

particular ruleset really does before you use it. This

avoids many problems.</note>

</summary>

<seealso><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">Module

documentation</a></seealso>

<seealso><a href="rewrite_intro.html">mod_rewrite

introduction</a></seealso>

<seealso><a href="rewrite_guide_advanced.html">Practical solutions to

advanced problems</a></seealso>

<seealso><a href="rewrite_tech.html">Technical details</a></seealso>

<section id="canonicalurl">

<title>Canonical URLs</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>On some webservers there are more than one URL for a

resource. Usually there are canonical URLs (which should be

actually used and distributed) and those which are just

shortcuts, internal ones, etc. Independent of which URL the

user supplied with the request he should finally see the

canonical one only.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We do an external HTTP redirect for all non-canonical

URLs to fix them in the location view of the Browser and

for all subsequent requests. In the example ruleset below

we replace <code>/~user</code> by the canonical

<code>/u/user</code> and fix a missing trailing slash for

<code>/u/user</code>.</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteRule ^/<strong>~</strong>([^/]+)/?(.*) /<strong>u</strong>/$1/$2 [<strong>R</strong>]

RewriteRule ^/([uge])/(<strong>[^/]+</strong>)$ /$1/$2<strong>/</strong> [<strong>R</strong>]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="canonicalhost"><title>Canonical Hostnames</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>The goal of this rule is to force the use of a particular

hostname, in preference to other hostnames which may be used to

reach the same site. For example, if you wish to force the use

of <strong>www.example.com</strong> instead of

<strong>example.com</strong>, you might use a variant of the

following recipe.</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>For sites running on a port other than 80:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^fully\.qualified\.domain\.name [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^80$

RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://fully.qualified.domain.name:%{SERVER_PORT}/$1 [L,R]

</pre></example>

<p>And for a site running on port 80</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^fully\.qualified\.domain\.name [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$

RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://fully.qualified.domain.name/$1 [L,R]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="moveddocroot">

<title>Moved <code>DocumentRoot</code></title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Usually the <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>

of the webserver directly relates to the URL "<code>/</code>".

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 <code>/about/</code>. This may be accomplished

using the following ruleset:</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We redirect the URL <code>/</code> to

<code>/about/</code>:

</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule <strong>^/$</strong> /about/ [<strong>R</strong>]

</pre></example>

<p>Note that this can also be handled using the <directive

module="mod_alias">RedirectMatch</directive> directive:</p>

<example>

RedirectMatch ^/$ http://example.com/e/www/

</example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="trailingslash">

<title>Trailing Slash Problem</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd><p>The vast majority of "trailing slash" problems can be dealt

with using the techniques discussed in the <a

href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/misc/FAQ-E.html#set-servername">FAQ

entry</a>. 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.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>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 <code>image.gif</code> in

<code>/~quux/foo/index.html</code> would become

<code>/~quux/image.gif</code> without the external

redirect!</p>

<p>So, to do this trick we write:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /~quux/

RewriteRule ^foo<strong>$</strong> foo<strong>/</strong> [<strong>R</strong>]

</pre></example>

<p>Alternately, you can put the following in a

top-level <code>.htaccess</code> file in the content directory.

But note that this creates some processing overhead.</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /~quux/

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} <strong>-d</strong>

RewriteRule ^(.+<strong>[^/]</strong>)$ $1<strong>/</strong> [R]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="movehomedirs">

<title>Move Homedirs to Different Webserver</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Many webmasters have asked for a solution to the

following situation: They wanted to redirect just all

homedirs on a webserver to another webserver. They usually

need such things when establishing a newer webserver which

will replace the old one over time.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>The solution is trivial with <module>mod_rewrite</module>.

On the old webserver we just redirect all

<code>/~user/anypath</code> URLs to

<code>http://newserver/~user/anypath</code>.</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^/~(.+) http://<strong>newserver</strong>/~$1 [R,L]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="multipledirs">

<title>Search pages in more than one directory</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Sometimes it is necessary to let the webserver search

for pages in more than one directory. Here MultiViews or

other techniques cannot help.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We program a explicit ruleset which searches for the

files in the directories.</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

# first try to find it in custom/...

# ...and if found stop and be happy:

RewriteCond /your/docroot/<strong>dir1</strong>/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f

RewriteRule ^(.+) /your/docroot/<strong>dir1</strong>/$1 [L]

# second try to find it in pub/...

# ...and if found stop and be happy:

RewriteCond /your/docroot/<strong>dir2</strong>/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f

RewriteRule ^(.+) /your/docroot/<strong>dir2</strong>/$1 [L]

# else go on for other Alias or ScriptAlias directives,

# etc.

RewriteRule ^(.+) - [PT]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="setenvvars">

<title>Set Environment Variables According To URL Parts</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>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.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>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 <code>/foo/S=java/bar/</code> gets translated to

<code>/foo/bar/</code> and the environment variable named

<code>STATUS</code> is set to the value "java".</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^(.*)/<strong>S=([^/]+)</strong>/(.*) $1/$3 [E=<strong>STATUS:$2</strong>]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="uservhosts">

<title>Virtual User Hosts</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Assume that you want to provide

<code>www.<strong>username</strong>.host.domain.com</code>

for the homepage of username via just DNS A records to the

same machine and without any virtualhosts on this

machine.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>For HTTP/1.0 requests there is no solution, but for

HTTP/1.1 requests which contain a Host: HTTP header we

can use the following ruleset to rewrite

<code>http://www.username.host.com/anypath</code>

internally to <code>/home/username/anypath</code>:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{<strong>HTTP_HOST</strong>} ^www\.<strong>[^.]+</strong>\.host\.com$

RewriteRule ^(.+) %{HTTP_HOST}$1 [C]

RewriteRule ^www\.<strong>([^.]+)</strong>\.host\.com(.*) /home/<strong>$1</strong>$2

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="redirecthome">

<title>Redirect Homedirs For Foreigners</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We want to redirect homedir URLs to another webserver

<code>www.somewhere.com</code> when the requesting user

does not stay in the local domain

<code>ourdomain.com</code>. This is sometimes used in

virtual host contexts.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Just a rewrite condition:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} <strong>!^.+\.ourdomain\.com$</strong>

RewriteRule ^(/~.+) http://www.somewhere.com/$1 [R,L]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="redirectanchors">

<title>Redirecting Anchors</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>By default, redirecting to an HTML anchor doesn't work,

because mod_rewrite escapes the <code>#</code> character,

turning it into <code>%23</code>. This, in turn, breaks the

redirection.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Use the <code>[NE]</code> flag on the

<code>RewriteRule</code>. NE stands for No Escape.

</p>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section>

<title>Time-Dependent Rewriting</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>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 <module>mod_rewrite</module>?</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>There are a lot of variables named <code>TIME_xxx</code>

for rewrite conditions. In conjunction with the special

lexicographic comparison patterns <code>&lt;STRING</code>,

<code>&gt;STRING</code> and <code>=STRING</code> we can

do time-dependent redirects:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} &gt;0700

RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} &lt;1900

RewriteRule ^foo\.html$ foo.day.html

RewriteRule ^foo\.html$ foo.night.html

</pre></example>

<p>This provides the content of <code>foo.day.html</code>

under the URL <code>foo.html</code> from

<code>07:00-19:00</code> and at the remaining time the

contents of <code>foo.night.html</code>. Just a nice

feature for a homepage...</p>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section>

<title>Backward Compatibility for YYYY to XXXX migration</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>How can we make URLs backward compatible (still

existing virtually) after migrating <code>document.YYYY</code>

to <code>document.XXXX</code>, e.g. after translating a

bunch of <code>.html</code> files to <code>.phtml</code>?</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We just rewrite the name to its basename and test for

existence of the new extension. If it exists, we take

that name, else we rewrite the URL to its original state.</p>

<example><pre>

# backward compatibility ruleset for

# rewriting document.html to document.phtml

# when and only when document.phtml exists

# but no longer document.html

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /~quux/

# parse out basename, but remember the fact

RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $1 [C,E=WasHTML:yes]

# rewrite to document.phtml if exists

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.phtml -f

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.phtml [S=1]

# else reverse the previous basename cutout

RewriteCond %{ENV:WasHTML} ^yes$

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section id="content">

<title>Content Handling</title>

<section>

<title>From Old to New (intern)</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Assume we have recently renamed the page

<code>foo.html</code> to <code>bar.html</code> and now want

to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. Actually

we want that users of the old URL even not recognize that

the pages was renamed.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We rewrite the old URL to the new one internally via the

following rule:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /~quux/

RewriteRule ^<strong>foo</strong>\.html$ <strong>bar</strong>.html

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section>

<title>From Old to New (extern)</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Assume again that we have recently renamed the page

<code>foo.html</code> to <code>bar.html</code> and now want

to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. But this

time we want that the users of the old URL get hinted to

the new one, i.e. their browsers Location field should

change, too.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We force a HTTP redirect to the new URL which leads to a

change of the browsers and thus the users view:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /~quux/

RewriteRule ^<strong>foo</strong>\.html$ <strong>bar</strong>.html [<strong>R</strong>]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section>

<title>From Static to Dynamic</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>How can we transform a static page

<code>foo.html</code> into a dynamic variant

<code>foo.cgi</code> in a seamless way, i.e. without notice

by the browser/user.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We just rewrite the URL to the CGI-script and force the

correct MIME-type so it gets really run as a CGI-script.

This way a request to <code>/~quux/foo.html</code>

internally leads to the invocation of

<code>/~quux/foo.cgi</code>.</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /~quux/

RewriteRule ^foo\.<strong>html</strong>$ foo.<strong>cgi</strong> [T=<strong>application/x-httpd-cgi</strong>]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

</section>

<section id="access">

<title>Access Restriction</title>

<section>

<title>Blocking of Robots</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>How can we block a really annoying robot from

retrieving pages of a specific webarea? A

<code>/robots.txt</code> file containing entries of the

"Robot Exclusion Protocol" is typically not enough to get

rid of such a robot.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We use a ruleset which forbids the URLs of the webarea

<code>/~quux/foo/arc/</code> (perhaps a very deep

directory indexed area where the robot traversal would

create big server load). We have to make sure that we

forbid access only to the particular robot, i.e. just

forbidding the host where the robot runs is not enough.

This would block users from this host, too. We accomplish

this by also matching the User-Agent HTTP header

information.</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^<strong>NameOfBadRobot</strong>.*

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^<strong>123\.45\.67\.[8-9]</strong>$

RewriteRule ^<strong>/~quux/foo/arc/</strong>.+ - [<strong>F</strong>]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section>

<title>Blocked Inline-Images</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Assume we have under <code>http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/</code>

some pages with inlined GIF graphics. These graphics are

nice, so others directly incorporate them via hyperlinks to

their pages. We don't like this practice because it adds

useless traffic to our server.</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>While we cannot 100% protect the images from inclusion,

we can at least restrict the cases where the browser

sends a HTTP Referer header.</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} <strong>!^$</strong>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/.*$ [NC]

RewriteRule <strong>.*\.gif$</strong> - [F]

</pre></example>

<example><pre>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*/foo-with-gif\.html$

RewriteRule <strong>^inlined-in-foo\.gif$</strong> - [F]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

<section>

<title>Proxy Deny</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>How can we forbid a certain host or even a user of a

special host from using the Apache proxy?</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>We first have to make sure <module>mod_rewrite</module>

is below(!) <module>mod_proxy</module> in the Configuration

file when compiling the Apache webserver. This way it gets

called <em>before</em> <module>mod_proxy</module>. Then we

configure the following for a host-dependent deny...</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} <strong>^badhost\.mydomain\.com$</strong>

RewriteRule !^http://[^/.]\.mydomain.com.* - [F]

</pre></example>

<p>...and this one for a user@host-dependent deny:</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_IDENT}@%{REMOTE_HOST} <strong>^badguy@badhost\.mydomain\.com$</strong>

RewriteRule !^http://[^/.]\.mydomain.com.* - [F]

</pre></example>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

</section>

<section id="other">

<title>Other</title>

<section>

<title>External Rewriting Engine</title>

<dl>

<dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>

<p>A FAQ: How can we solve the FOO/BAR/QUUX/etc.

problem? There seems no solution by the use of

<module>mod_rewrite</module>...</p>

</dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<p>Use an external <directive module="mod_rewrite"

>RewriteMap</directive>, i.e. a program which acts

like a <directive module="mod_rewrite"

>RewriteMap</directive>. It is run once on startup of Apache

receives the requested URLs on <code>STDIN</code> and has

to put the resulting (usually rewritten) URL on

<code>STDOUT</code> (same order!).</p>

<example><pre>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteMap quux-map <strong>prg:</strong>/path/to/map.quux.pl

RewriteRule ^/~quux/(.*)$ /~quux/<strong>${quux-map:$1}</strong>

</pre></example>

<example><pre>

#!/path/to/perl

# disable buffered I/O which would lead

# to deadloops for the Apache server

$| = 1;

# read URLs one per line from stdin and

# generate substitution URL on stdout

while (&lt;&gt;) {

s|^foo/|bar/|;

print $_;

}

</pre></example>

<p>This is a demonstration-only example and just rewrites

all URLs <code>/~quux/foo/...</code> to

<code>/~quux/bar/...</code>. Actually you can program

whatever you like. But notice that while such maps can be

<strong>used</strong> also by an average user, only the

system administrator can <strong>define</strong> it.</p>

</dd>

</dl>

</section>

</section>

</manualpage>