R – Avoiding sub-directory request rewrites with Apache mod_rewrite

apachemod-rewriteSecurity

I want to a rewrite rule such that if a user goes to the URL example.org/stuff/junk.jpg the rule will process and end up at re-writer.php but if the user goes to example.org/stuff/hackingisawesome/junk.jpg the rule will not be triggered and they will get a standard 404 (or a page, if one should exist).

I can't tell, based on the environmental variables, if this is possible without some fairly fancy regex.

So does anyone know of either:

a) a way this is already built into the mod_rewrite syntax, or

b) a good, reliable way of handling this with regular expressions?

Links to documentation or tutorials welcome. I'm just feeling clueless on where to go next.

Oh, and I can imagine the ways I could simply have the script that the rule redirects to simply deliver the 404, but I'd rather only use the rule when the conditions exist.

Best Answer

Try this:

RewriteRule ^stuff/[^/]+$ re-writer.php

This will rewrite all requests to /stuff/… with only one additional path segment to re-writer.php.

Related Solutions

Apache – How to enable mod_rewrite for Apache 2.2

In order to use mod_rewrite you can type the following command in the terminal:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Restart apache2 after

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

sudo service apache2 restart

or as per new unified System Control Way

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Then, if you'd like, you can use the following .htaccess file.

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

The above .htaccess file (if placed in your DocumentRoot) will redirect all traffic to an index.php file in the DocumentRoot unless the file exists.

So, let's say you have the following directory structure and httpdocs is the DocumentRoot

httpdocs/
    .htaccess
    index.php
    images/
        hello.png
    js/
        jquery.js
    css/
        style.css
includes/
    app/
        app.php

Any file that exists in httpdocs will be served to the requester using the .htaccess shown above, however, everything else will be redirected to httpdocs/index.php. Your application files in includes/app will not be accessible.

Apache – How to debug Apache mod_rewrite

One trick is to turn on the rewrite log. To turn it on, try this line in your Apache HTTP Server main configuration or current virtual host file (not in .htaccess):

LogLevel alert rewrite:trace6

Before Apache httpd 2.4 mod_rewrite, such a per-module logging configuration did not exist yet. Instead you could use the following logging settings:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteLog "/var/log/apache2/rewrite.log"
RewriteLogLevel 3

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Apache – How to enable mod_rewrite for Apache 2.2

Apache – How to debug Apache mod_rewrite

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