Linux – Search and Replace in .htaccess files in linux

linuxsearch-and-replace

I need to add this line to every .htaccess file that is located in a /home/*/site/assets/.htaccess
where * can be any amount of directories deep

I need to fine this text

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /site/assets/sym/$1 [L,NS]

and add a line above it, or replace it with this

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/site/assets/sym
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /site/assets/sym/$1 [L,NS]

I've looked online at this site but I am unclear how to deal with

generating a list of the files I want to edit (so find all files that match this path: /home/*/site/assets/.htaccess)
Adding line breaks in the replace text

Can anyone suggest a resource that will clearly explain it, or fail that, let me know if I am looking at the correct tools for this job?

My OS is Cent OS 5.5, i'm running a LAMP server if that makes much difference, apache 2.

Thanks

Best Answer

You've chosen an excellent set of tools for the job!

Generating a list of files you want to edit is very simple - I'm here assuming you're using a shell which will expand the output of matching filenames, such as bash, or dash:

echo /home/*/site/assets/.htaccess > list.txt

However, if * can mean more than 1 level of directories, I would go with this:

find -name '.htaccess' /home | grep '/site/assets/sym' > list.txt

Your shell will expand the expression into a list, and redirect the output to list.txt. One file for each line.

You can also search for files named .htaccess with find - to see if there's anyone that you've missed, like this:

find -name '.htaccess' /home

Adding line breaks in replace text - this depends a bit on your editor. Line breaks are usually represented as \n

What you want to do, can probably be achieved with a small shell-script - when for variable in expression; do .... done is used, it will execute the lines in between do/done once for each word in expression. NOTE: This can backfire if the paths contain spaces.

for file in /home/*/site/assets/.htaccess; do
    sed 's/RewriteRule \^(.\*)\$ \/site\/assets\/sym\/\$1 \[L,NS\]/RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^\/site\/assets\/sym\nRewriteRule \^(.\*)\$ \/site\/assets\/sym\/\$1 \[L,NS\]/g' $file > $file.new
    mv $file $file.old
    mv $file.new $file
done

(This will leave a file named .htaccess.old in its spot.)

Rewritten for alternate list-gathering-approach:

for file in $(find -name '.htaccess' /home | grep '/site/assets/sym'); do
    sed 's/RewriteRule \^(.\*)\$ \/site\/assets\/sym\/\$1 \[L,NS\]/RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^\/site\/assets\/sym\nRewriteRule \^(.\*)\$ \/site\/assets\/sym\/\$1 \[L,NS\]/g' $file > $file.new
    mv $file $file.old
    mv $file.new $file
done

Or, in one line, without taking a backup:

for file in /home/*/site/assets/.htaccess; do sed -i 's/RewriteRule \^(.\*)\$ \/site\/assets\/sym\/\$1 \[L,NS\]/RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^\/site\/assets\/sym\nRewriteRule \^(.\*)\$ \/site\/assets\/sym\/\$1 \[L,NS\]/g' $file; done

Related Solutions

Linux – How to replace a text string in multiple files in Linux

I'd use Python for this. Put all this code into a file called mass_replace and "chmod +x mass_replace":

#!/usr/bin/python

import os
import re
import sys

def file_replace(fname, s_before, s_after):
    out_fname = fname + ".tmp"
    out = open(out_fname, "w")
    for line in open(fname):
        out.write(re.sub(s_before, s_after, line))
    out.close()
    os.rename(out_fname, fname)


def mass_replace(dir_name, s_before, s_after):
    for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(dir_name):
        for fname in filenames:
            f = fname.lower()
            # example: limit replace to .txt, .c, and .h files
            if f.endswith(".txt") or f.endswith(".c") or f.endswith(".h"):
                f = os.path.join(dirpath, fname)
                file_replace(f, s_before, s_after)

if len(sys.argv) != 4:
    u = "Usage: mass_replace <dir_name> <string_before> <string_after>\n"
    sys.stderr.write(u)
    sys.exit(1)

mass_replace(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2], sys.argv[3])

For a single search and replace of one string in one type of file, the solution with find and sed isn't bad. But if you want to do a lot of processing in one pass, you can edit this program to extend it, and it will be easy (and likely to be correct the first time).

Linux – How to replace text string in any type file(for example binary and …) and multiple files in linux

The problem with editing binary files is that they are often laid out in a particular format with the position of particular bytes having significance. So trying to automate that can be very difficult and should probably be done with a tool that understands the format of the file.

The following Bash script can be used to edit text files:

#!/bin/bash
while read -r file
do
    {
    tempfile=$(tempfile) || tempfile=$(mktemp) || { tempfile="/tmp/tmpfile.$$" && touch "$tempfile"; } &&
    sed 's/original text/new text/g' "$file" > "$tempfile" &&
    mv "$tempfile" "$file"
    } || echo "Edit failed for $file"
done < <(find . -type f)

or change the second and last lines to:

find . -type f | while

and

done

If your version of sed can do in-place editing, then you can eliminate the creation of temporary files (everything between do and done above) and use this sed command inside the loop instead:

sed -i 's/original text/new text/g' "$file"

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How to replace a text string in multiple files in Linux

Linux – How to replace text string in any type file(for example binary and …) and multiple files in linux

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