How do I remove a folder from a URL? - .htaccess

First of all, this question has been asked a few times on stack, however, none of the answers seem to work for me.
I have a website which has a "pages" folder in the root, I want to store all of my website pages in there.
Here's my structure
/pages/folder/folder2/index.php
I want to make it so the link displays:
https://wwww.website.com/folder/folder2/index.php
Removing the "/pages/" part of the URL, when I try all of the answers suggested previously, I get a 404 error.
Here is the htaccess I'm using
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^pages(/.*|)$ $1 [L,NC]
</IfModule>
and i also tried:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^pages/(.*)$ /$1 [L,R=301]
This htaccess is in the root. I can't seem to get it working, can anyone offer any suggestions? Thank you!

Your second attempt looks fine, though it can be imporoved a bit:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?pages/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301]
That rule should work inside the http servers host configuration or in some dynamic configuration file (".htaccess" style file) if the http server's rewriting module is loaded. You definitely should prefer the first option, but if you really need to use a dynamic configuration file then take care that the interpretation of such files is configured at all and that the file is placed in your hosts's DOCUMENT_ROOT folder and is readable for the http server process.
If that does not work then you need to start debugging. In this case you will start by monitoring your http server's error log file while making test requests. If no hint appears in there you need to enable rewrite logging which allows you to learn what exactly is going on inside the rewriting engine. See the official dpcumentation for the apache rewriting module for that. As typcial for OpenSource software it is of excellent quality and comes with great examples.

Related

how to fix htaccess to friendly url

i tried different code in order to convert url to friendly url, but its doesnt seems working. here is my code the recent in tried.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
i would like to use instead of id to friendly text which could be the title of the page.
my current link is as follows
http://example.com/website/425199399/
i am exception the link something like this
http://example.com/website/the-working-class-family-425199399
Thanks for your help.
The code snippet you posted does not even attempt to implement a rewrite s you sketched it...
Here is a version that should point you into the right direction, but you certainly will have to adopt it to our needs and specific situation. So you won't get around reading into the documentation of the tools you use. You will find that the documentation of the apache modules (her the rewriting module) are of excellent quality and offer really good examples...
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?website/.+-(\d+)$ /website/$1 [END]
In case you receive an internal server error (http status 500) using the rule above then chances are that you operate a very old version of the apache http server. You will see a definite hint to an unsupported [END] flag in your http servers error log file in that case. You can either try to upgrade or use the older [L] flag, it probably will work the same in this situation, though that depends a bit on your setup.
This rule will work likewise in the http servers host configuration or inside a dynamic configuration file (".htaccess" file). Obviously the rewriting module needs to be loaded inside the http server and enabled in the http host. In case you use a dynamic configuration file you need to take care that it's interpretation is enabled at all in the host configuration and that it is located in the host's DOCUMENT_ROOT folder.
And a general remark: you should always prefer to place such rules in the http servers host configuration instead of using dynamic configuration files (".htaccess"). Those dynamic configuration files add complexity, are often a cause of unexpected behavior, hard to debug and they really slow down the http server. They are only provided as a last option for situations where you do not have access to the real http servers host configuration (read: really cheap service providers) or for applications insisting on writing their own rules (which is an obvious security nightmare).

Why does this RewriteRule work for all extensions but .php?

This simple RewriteRule that I am using for practicing with .htaccess files works almost always:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^.*$ test.html
When I have the file flowers.html and I use http://localhost/flowers I get redirected to test.html, however when I rename flowers.html to flowers.php I get a 404 page with the message The requested URL /flowers was not found on this server. Does anyone know what causes this?
EDIT:
When I create an empty file called flowers it does redirect properly to test.html. What is going on here?
This does sound like a conflict with MultiViews, so try adding the following at the top of your .htaccess file to disable MultiViews:
Options -MultiViews
MultiViews is not enabled by default, so maybe this has been enabled in your server config?
When MultiViews (part of mod_negotiation) is enabled, a request for /flowers (no extension) will result in Apache searching for an appropriate file to return (based on mime-type) by trying various file extensions of files found in that directory. This is achieved with an internal subrequest before mod_rewrite runs.
However, it's not clear why this would be a problem in your case if you have no other directives? Since your directive simply rewrites everything to test.html (which should include any subrequests). (I was unable to reproduce this behaviour on my Apache 2.4 test server - hence my initial doubt.)

How to rewrite rule based on folder and file type in htaccess?

I have been trying to implement a rewrite rule for a downloads folder so that I can serve files that end with .gif, .jpg, .png, .css, .js or .swf and send users to user.php for every other file.
For example: I should hit this URL : www.somewhere.com/downloads/mypic.jpg,
but when I try : www.somewhere.com/downloads/my.pdf I should be redirected to user.php.
So far, I have :
RewriteRule ^*/downloads//!(.*)\.(gif|jpg|png|jpeg|css|js|swf)$ /base/user.php?a=$1 [R=302,L]
Here are some samples for expected behaviour :
good
www.somewhere.com/downloads/mypic.jpg
www.somewhere.com/downloads/otherpic.png
www.somewhere.com/downloads/scripts/jquery.js
bad
www.somewhere.com/downloads/my.pdf > send the request to www.somewhere.com/base/user.php
www.somewhere.com/downloads/readme.txt > send the request to www.somewhere.com/base/user.php
www.somewhere.com/downloads/postman.json > send the request to www.somewhere.com/base/user.php
This probably is what you are looking for:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?downloads/([^/]+)\.(gif|jpg|png|jpeg|css|js|swf)$ /base/user.php?a=$1 [R=302]
The above rule will redirect the browser, so change the visible URL. That is what you suggest yourself in your question. In case you want to implement an internal rewriting instead you need to alter the flag slightly:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?downloads/([^/]+)\.(gif|jpg|png|jpeg|css|js|swf)$ /base/user.php?a=$1 [END]
This rule will work in the http servers host configuration and likewise in dynamic configuration files (.htaccess). Obviously the rewriting modules must be enabled in your http server. If you decide to use a dynamic configuration you need to enable its interpretation first, take a look at the AllowOverride directive in the official documentation for that.
And a general hint: you should always prefer to place such rules inside the http servers (virtual) host configuration instead of using dynamic configuration files (.htaccess style files). Those files are notoriously error prone, hard to debug and they really slow down the server. They are only supported as a last option for situations where you do not have control over the host configuration (read: really cheap hosting service providers) or if you have an application that relies on writing its own rewrite rules (which is an obvious security nightmare).
In your modification of the question it becomes clear that what you try to implement actually is the opposite of what you apparently asked before. Here is a modified version of the above rule:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/downloads/[^/]+\.(gif|jpg|png|jpeg|css|js|swf)$
RewriteRule !^/?downloads/([^/]+\.\w+)$ /base/user.php?a=$1 [R=302]
And another general remark: often it makes more sense to not grant any access directly to files in the server side physical file system but to implement a router script instead which controls access to all such files. This allows for more fine grained access control and keeps the physical layout separated from the URL set you define.
Have this rule inside downloads/.htaccess file (create it if it doesn't exist):
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(gif|png|jpe?g|css|js|swf)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* /base/user.php?a=$0 [R=302,L,NC,QSA]
I decided to redirect, when a request to a forbidden extension exists. This worked for me :
RewriteRule ^/downloads/(..(pdf|txt|json))$ /base/user.php?a=$0 [R=302,L]

Simple RewriteRule with nginx

I'm trying to write a RewriteRule to make a simple url. I want users to be able to type enter
www.example.com/somepage
and have it take them to
www.example.com/abc/somepage.php
How can this be done in .htaccess?
I've tried these to no avail:
RewriteRule ^somepage$ abc/somepage.php [L]
RewriteRule ^/somepage$ /abc/somepage.php [L]
What am I doing wrong?
Edit: nginx can also handle rewrites in its configuration files (and I think is actually preferred), which was my case (see my answer below). HTH
If you want the user's web browser to be redirected to your PHP page then you need the R=301 flag at the end of the RewriteRule.
But if you want the request to be silently rewritten (so that Apache knows where to find the resource, but the user's web browser just sees the "clean" URL) then you don't want the `R' flag.
Try the following:
RewriteRule ^somepage$ /abc/somepage.php
This will only rewrite a request for /somepage so that Apache fetches the content from /abc/somepage.php instead.
Our nginx server was utilizing .htaccess files (as I implemented rewrites there before), but now it is handling the rewrites in its configuration (.conf) files (which is the recommended method).
I do not have permission to modify the .conf files, so I won't post any untested code.. Hope this helps somebody!

removing file extension with htaccess failing

i'm using an htaccess script trying to remove the .php testing the .htaccess on a testing server it runs fine, but on the live server that is a different host it trys rewriting the file based on the absolute path and the rewrite fails
here is the htaccess:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php
this is taking a url like this www.example.com/services
and trying to point it to /n/c/example.com/public/service.php
I know the {REQUEST_FILENAME} is suppose to be pulling the full local system path, but i don't understand why it's not finding the file. i know very little about htaccess and mod_rewriting so i'm not really sure what I should try to make it base everything off of just the url path, or if there is a better solution. I'm really open to suggestions.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Use RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_URI}.php [L]
It is hard to tell why your rule did not worked for you by having so little info about your Apache setup and any other rewrite rules that you may have.
Quite possible that the [L] flag did the trick for you -- you may have other rewrite rules that were rewriting this URL further, producing incorrect result in the end. I don't think that %{REQUEST_URI} did such a big job on its own, unless you have some symbolic links / aliases or even some transparent proxy in use which could make a difference.
Keep in mind, that the rules you have shown in your question cannot generate this sort of URL to be visible in browser's address bar (example.com//service.php/) -- it has to be a redirect (3xx code) involved .. which suggests that you have other rules somewhere.
Most likely it is a combination of your Apache specific settings & combined rewrite rules logic (where the L flag can make a big difference depending on those other rules).
The only way to give more precise answer will be enabling rewrite debugging and analyzing how rewrite was executed and what was involved.
Have you enabled mod_rewrite on the other server? AddModule mod_rewrite, I think.
Also - more likely - have you enabled .htaccess? You would need to have
AllowOverride All
or
AllowOverride FileInfo
for that.
These directives will need to go in the apache config files (usually /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf or one of the files in /etc/httpd/conf.d), and you will need to restart apache to get them to take effect.

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