rewriterule question help!

slick101

Hey everyone I currently have a rewriterule:

RewriteRule m/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$	modules/$1/$2/$3 [L]
RewriteRule m/(.*)/(.*)/image/(.*)$ modules/$1/$2/images/$3 [L]

the first one is wroking when i do
site.com/m/test1/4/theme.css

but for the second one its not working anyone have any idea how i can get this working?

seems my controller is interfering saying this application m is not specified...but its working for the first condition so im going crazy! thanks

paulnaj

Hi Slick,

Isn't the first rule making the second one never kick in.

Suppose you had an image URL:

site.com/m/test1/image/the_image.jpg

Using the first rule this would map:

$1 <- test1
$2 <- image
$3 <- the_image.jpg

So maybe flip the order they appear in the file. Then the special case will be picked up first.

Hope that helps.

slick101

Paulnaj,

Hey thanks for trying to help out!

I actually got it working finally!

about your comment, it actually should not overwrite because I flagged it with [L]

the issue actually was coming from another rewriterule though

RewriteRule images/(.+)$ etc/img/$1 [L]

Since my url had images/ it did the rewrite so by adding ^
RewriteRule ^images/(.+)$ etc/img/$1 [L]

It tells it to start with images for mysite.com/images/test.jpg

-slick101

paulnaj

Hi again,

Glad you got it working!

Just to make sure I understand for the future, though - I thought [L] meant that no further rule will be used if this one matches.

Hence, if the image does get matched by the first rule, then [L] means the second rule won't even be tested.

Just trying to get it straight in my head. 🙂

slick101

Hey man, I am in the same boat! You might be right though and I have it wrong?

I think flag [L] means to stop here do not apply anymore rewriterules. so lets say

1 Rewriterule [match] [replace] [L]
2 Rewriterule [match] [replace]
3 Rewriterule [match] [replace] [L]

first rewriterule will stop.

I believe now 2 & 3 can work together...if the 3rd is satified then we stop in case there any other rewriterules underneath it.

At least this is what I think is going on ?

bpat1434

The "L" flag does mean "last" and that is relation to that specific chain of rewrites (as you can have rewrites be for specific Rewrite Conditions).

So given the original rewrite rules:

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule m/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ modules/$1/$2/$3 [L]
RewriteRule m/(.*)/(.*)/image/(.*)$ modules/$1/$2/image/$3 [L]

The url domain.com/m/test1/4/style.css it would match the first RewriteRule because between the "m" and the end of the url, there are only 3 path separators ("/"). So that url would be rewritten to: modules/test1/4/style.css.

Given a similar url: domain.com/m/test1/4/image/logo.png the first RewriteRule would not match because between the "m" and the end of the url, there are in fact 4 path separators. So it falls through to the next RewriteRule which does match since the 4[sup]th[/sup] part of the url is the word "image". So then that rule is applied and it's rewritten to: modules/test1/4/image/logo.jpg.

Since both are flagged with "L", then rule processing stops.

Hope that helps clarify things.

paulnaj

Hi bpat,

Still a bit confused with the example you gave. Why wouldn't the first rule from

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule m/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ modules/$1/$2/$3 [L]
RewriteRule m/(.*)/(.*)/image/(.*)$ modules/$1/$2/image/$3 [L]

match 'domain.com/m/test1/4/image/logo.png' as follows:

$1 <- test1
$2 <- 4
$3 <- image/logo.png

... since the $3 matches to the end including forward slashes.

Paul 😕

bpat1434

Woops... oversight on my part. You're absolutely correct. The real version should be:

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule m/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ modules/$1/$2/$3 [L]
RewriteRule m/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/image/([^/]*)$ modules/$1/$2/image/$3 [L]

paulnaj

Phew - thought I was missing something. 🙂