CakePHP [.htaccess], static files as the root of project - .htaccess

Question

I would like to be able to access static files at the root of my project, in a folder at the same level of app/. It's because that is the only directory to wich I have the permission to read-write files on my server, so our images are uploaded there.
So if someone writes this URL:
www.mysite.com/img-rw
It displays images in the folder at [project-root]/my-rw-dir
Any ideas on how to edit .htaccess files for something like this to be done?
Thanks

Answer 1

Taking into account that this is a course project (as the OP said in comments) and you are NOT concerned about security flaws, here is what you could do.
By default CakePHP has 3 nested .htaccess files:
/.htaccess (Project root folder)
/app/.htaccess
/app/webroot/.htaccess
The first (topmost) of them is the first to respond when you try to access www.mysite.com:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
Clearly, this sends the user request right into the /app/webroot folder. We could use the conditional check that exists in /app/webroot/.htacess to, instead of promptly redirecting to webroot, check if the given URL matches to a file or folder. In order to do so, you'll need to update the parent (/.htaccess) file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d # Checks if the given URL matches to a folder
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f # Checks if the given URL matches to a file
#RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L] # This line is commented, should be removed
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
This way, the request will only be redirected to /app/webroot if none of the conditions are met. If you need only to return files, than you could remove RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d, which verifies if the URL matches to a folder ( -d = directory).
A cleaner version that would only check for files should look like this:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
With this tweak, accessing www.mysite.com/image.jpg should return the file image.jpg hosted at your project root (/image.jpg).

Answer 2

For anyone wondering, this works great :
.htaccess (project root)
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
# This folder is a subfolder of project root but contains static images
# Accessed like so: www.mysite.com/imgrw/[file name]
RewriteRule ^imgrw/(.*)$ /dir-at-root-level/img/$1 [L]
# Everything else is handled by cakephp webroot
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(dir-at-root-level) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>