htaccess Default Query String Value - .htaccess

Question

For some reason my .htaccess is adding default value for _url key.
My .htaccess
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
DirectoryIndex index.php
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?_url=/$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
When I visit my project on http://localhost/my-project and dump the query string var_dump($_GET); I get following result;
array(1) {
["_url"]=>
string(11) "/index.html"
}
When I visit my project on http://localhost/my-project/test and dump the query string, I get following result;
array(1) {
["_url"]=>
string(11) "/test"
}
I'm guessing it has something to do with my .htaccess and / or server (apache) configuration.
Is there any work around for this issue? Why don't I have expected result;
array(1) {
["_url"]=>
string(11) "/"
}
Where does this index.html comes from and how do I get rid off it?

Answer 1

That index.html is coming due to your DirectoryIndex directive which is probably set to:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
When you visit http://localhost/my-project Apache loads http://localhost/my-project/index.html due to this directive and your REQUEST_URI becomes index.html (in current directory).
When RewriteRule runs it just passes current URI as GET parameter hence you get index.html in _url GET parameter.
You can tweak your rules like this:
DirectoryIndex index.php
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?_url=/$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
Now this rewrite rule won't be invoked for http://localhost/my-project since it is matching .+ pattern.