Iis – Prevent URL Rewrite rules from being inherited by subdirectories in IIS7

iisiis-7rewriteurlweb.config

I have a URL Rewrite setup for clean URLs in a CMS and my web.config looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="Clean URLs" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^([^/]+)/?$" />
                    <conditions>
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="?id={R:1}" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

It basically turns index.php?id=something into something for clean URLs. Very simple and it works well.

As is common in CMSs, to prevent the back-end from breaking, each subdirectory requires either <remove name="Clean URLs" /> or <clear /> in its web.config so the rule isn't inherited.

Is there a way of specifying in the parent rule that it shouldn't be inherited by its children at all by somehow limiting the rule's scope to only the current directory? Something like <rule name="Clean URLs" stopProcessing="true" inherit="no"> would be epic.

Best Answer

Found the answer after 4.5 hours of Googling!

http://runtingsproper.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/solved-breaking-parent-webconfig.html

Basically taking advantage of

<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false"> 
    <system.webServer>
        <!-- ... -->
    </system.webServer>
</location>

Related Solutions

WordPress – Multiple WordPress and ASP.NET MVC 2 websites on shared hosting with IIS7

As it turns out, I needed to change my domain configuration on GoDaddy to get the permalinks I was looking for. The issue I described turned out to only be a problem for my default domain, even though I had it redirect to a subfolder. What I needed to do was create a bogus domain as my default domain so that I could have my real default domain point to the subfolder rather than get redirected to the subfolder. It seems kind of ridiculous, but it worked.

Here's the GoDaddy Help article that explains the process: http://community.godaddy.com/help/article/4067.

After following the steps in the article (which took a little over 24 hours to finish processing), I was also able to delete the web.config file I had originally placed in the root.

Excluding a directory from a root .htaccess rewrite rule to allow it to be password protected

It would seem like you've already tried this, it's the most obvious answer (as poncha pointed out) and it's probably the most likely to show up in a mod_rewrite tutorial/guide. By exlcuding the directory using a RewriteCond, noting that the match of the condition is against the %{REQUEST_URI}, which begins with a /":

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/sub_dir
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} .*\.(jpeg|jpg|gif|png)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . /public/404.php [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/sub_dir
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

EDIT:

Looking at what you've tried, this also is wrong. You don't want the leading slash in the match of the RewriteRule when it is in an htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^sub_dir  - [L]


RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} .*\.(jpeg|jpg|gif|png)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . /public/404.php [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Related Topic