[RESOLVED] RewriteRule worked once, alas no more

neerav

mod_rewrite is not easy, but I'm having a doozy of a time getting the simplest rule to work:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/dis.php /dls.php
ErrorDocument 404 /404error.php

This is to correct a common spelling error. I keep getting the 404 document. The rewrite worked ONCE sometime in its 2 hour creation process, but then stopped working so I've pared it down to the bare essential. Still no luck. I've been starting at a screen for aforementioned 2 hours and my eyes are about to fall out. :o

I've tried:
RewriteRule ^/dis.php /dls.php
RewriteRule ^/dis.php$ /dls.php
RewriteRule ^/dis.php$ /dls.php [R]
RewriteRule ^/dis.php$ /dls.php [R=301]

And a few other combinations. The last one is what I would "like".

Brit

RewriteRule ^dls.php /dis.php

neerav

THANK YOU!!

I thought the starting slash was part of the request. I think I was staring at the mod_rewrite manual a little too long to have actually seen that. I must have "accidentally" left out the slash the one time it worked

One more question. When matching a condition, does %{REQUEST_URI} have the slash or not?

Brit

It would do, yes.

Let us assume you have a (real) URL of:

/index.php?material=wood&colour=brown

Your rewrite rule would be:

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteRule ^/([A-Za-z])/([A-Za-z]+)$ /index.php?material=$1&colour=$2

Which would give you a working URL of:

/wood/brown

neerav

Why would your example work with the initial / whereas in my case, it had to be removed? Is there a rule-of-thumb to prevent further insanity?

Brit

Here's a quick and dirty guide:

^ABC = Match a string that starts with ABC.

In your first example, you were trying to match the string 'dls.php' so that it could be rewritten as 'dis.php'.

This is why simply putting ^dls.php works.

However, / is a delimiter, meaning that regex expects there to be a pair - and acts on whatever is between them; so, ^/dls.php will not work because as far as regex is concerned, its missing the second / to close the pair.

You don't need to use it for this particular regex for two reasons:

You are only matching one file (dls.php)
You have no directory requirement (/something/)

In the second example however, where we are dealing with rewritten urls, you'll notice we're using the / delimiter - because thats the expected format.

Regards,

Brit.

neerav

Brit, thank you for all of your help.

For others who may face similar problems, a note very close to the bottom of the mod_rewrite manual clarifies the changes that need to be made to the examples if using rewrite in .htaccess files. So that explains why I didn't need (can't use) the initial slash. The examples and Brit's info is used in the per-server config file, where I was using the per-directory config file! :o

Note
Never forget that Pattern is applied to a complete URL in per-server configuration files. But in per-directory configuration files, the per-directory prefix (which always is the same for a specific directory!) is automatically removed for the pattern matching and automatically added after the substitution has been done. This feature is essential for many sorts of rewriting, because without this prefix stripping you have to match the parent directory which is not always possible.

There is one exception: If a substitution string starts with ``http://'' then the directory prefix will not be added and an external redirect or proxy throughput (if flag P is used!) is forced!