Apache redirect by without URL rewriting

apache-2.2mod-rewriterewrite

Is there a way I could achieve redirecting to another site, without losing the original URL?
So, what we'd want to achieve is to be able to access:
somesite.com/some/url -> someothersite.com/some/url
but we'd like to retain somesite.com/*.

In other words, we'd want to access every URL of someothersite.com via somesite.com.

Best Answer

Are you actually looking for a redirect, or to have that other site's content appear under your original URL (more proxying)? I'll assume that the other server is your content and either internal/backend or if public you're aware of the negative SEO implications. If someothersite.com is not your site and content, you probably shouldn't be doing this.

You'll need to have mod_proxy and mod_rewrite running, which is likely uncommenting the lines mentioning it if not already done.

Then in the somesite.com config:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule /some/url(.*) http://someothersite.com/some/url$1 [P,L]

Related Solutions

Setting Apache environment variable on mod_rewrite rewrite condition

The reason the above configuration isn't working is that the Header lines are evaluated before the RewriteRule and thus the environment variable is always null.

The solution is to move the RewriteRule outside the <Directory> block so that it is evaluated before the Header lines.

See Serving Javascript Fast for more details

Here is the final working configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName dev.example.com
   DocumentRoot /var/www/html/dev

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^versioned/[^/\.]+/(.*)$ /$1 [E=set_expires_header:true,L]

   <Directory "/var/www/html/dev">
      Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
      AllowOverride All
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all

      Header append Expires "Mon, 28 Jul 2014 23:30:00 GMT" env=set_expires_header
      Header append Cache-Control "public" env=set_expires_header
   </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

How to forward requests to another URL without actually changing the URL in Apache

You need to proxy it with the [P] option. This also will require you to set up mod_proxy.

See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html and search for "force proxy".

Keep in mind that this will put additional load on your Apache. How much load is dependent upon how much traffic you receive and how quickly the Tomcat server can return traffic back to the Apache.

You could also just simply include /bar in your mod_proxy_ajp rules or mod_jk configuration (JkMount), which would be a far far better solution than using mod_rewrite.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Setting Apache environment variable on mod_rewrite rewrite condition

How to forward requests to another URL without actually changing the URL in Apache

Related Topic