htaccess redirect problems - .htaccess

Question

My .htaccess looks like this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.gif)|(\.jpg)|(\.png)|(\.css)|(\.js)|(\.php)|(\.swf)|(\.xpi)|(\.ico)|(\.src)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)$
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} ! -f
RewriteRule (.*)$ view.php?picid=$1 [L]
Problem is that when I visit www.example.com, it’s sending me to view.php. There is an index.php file in my root directory. How do I get .htaccess to ignore the index file?

Answer 1

Try this rule:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(gif|jpg|png|css|js|php|swf|xpi|ico|src)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule (.+) view.php?picid=$1 [L]
The important changes I made:
The regular expression in your first RewriteCond is faulty. The $ anchor is only applied to the last option in the alteration.
The second RewriteCond directive is useless.
The third RewriteCond that’s commented out will do just what you want: Check if the requested URI path can be mapped to an existing file.
Altered the quantifier from zero or more to one or more characters. That will exclude the empty URI path when / is requested.

Answer 2

Remove the # from the fourth line and remove the space between the exclamation mark (!) and the -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
This line says that if the file doesn't already exist on the server, in this case, index.php, then continue and do the rewrite that follows.
Also check you've got both a DirectoryIndex as well as checking against any valid directories.
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
Which would leave you with this cleaner version:
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*)$ view.php?picid=$1 [L]
This first sets up index.php as the default file. Then you run the Rewrite engine, and if the requested file does not already exist on the server as either a file or a directory, will pass things on to the view.php file and run its magic.