Apache redirection with original URL

Anon

Hi, I need your professional help. I've a problem about apache redirection. My question is when a html doesn't exiting on server abc.com, apache can redirects it to def.com with original html filename. What I mean is people click on www.abc.com/hello.html, it'll jump to www.def.com/hello.html. filename "hello.html" is dynamic, so it may be world.html, canada.html etc...... I did setting on apache "ErrorDocument 404 http://mail.founder.ca/cgi-bin/missing.pl?$REQUEST_URI" but not working. Thanks for your help.

lawnmowerman

While this isn't a PHP question, I'll still answer it 🙂

Check out the RewriteRule, Redirect, and RedirectMatch Apache directives.

You can use them like this:

RewriteRule /(.*) http://www.def.com/$1

Redirect / http://www.def.com

RedirectMatch /(.*) http://www.def.com/$1

Which you use depends on the exact type of action you want taken. RewriteRule and RedirectMatch are essentially the same, but I believe RewriteRule requires that mod_rewrite is enabled.

Hope this helps!

-Rich

Anon

Thank you Rich, but how can I use this line? Just add this after line "ErrorDocument 404" under httpd.conf? Thanks again.

Anon

One more question, redirect sounds like forward everything to a new server. However, I like to remain in the current if the html is presented. Just jump to another server if the requested file is not exit.

lawnmowerman

Ah...sorry. I misunderstood what you wanted to do.

You can use ErrorDocument:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#errordocument

To specify a script to call when a page is not found:
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.abc.com/cgi-bin/error.pl
or
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.abc.com/404.php4

Apache then populates some REDIRECT_ variables which your script can then use to again redirect to the same page on a different server.

For the REDIRECT_ variables, check out:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/custom-error.html

Does that help?

-Rich

Anon

Thanks Rich,
But REDIRECT_ environment variables are not working on my apache even $ENV{"REDIRECT_USER_AGENT"}. I can't refer original script/html filename after apache forward the url to the page which I specified as the target as ErrorDocment.

lawnmowerman

Are there any errors in the apache log files?

Also, the env variable is REDIRECT_HTTP_USER_AGENT, not REDIRECT_USER_AGENT, which may be your problem with this particular usage.

-Rich

Anon

There has no error but those variablies ar empty. Actually, I figured out the other way to do. Add this line:
Redirect / http://test.founder.ca/search.php?sfile=
Force a php script (search.php) to do searching on filesystem. Then, if the file exit, forward it to original url otherwise point it to the other server machine. It sounds stupid but good enough for urgent. Thank you very much Rich~ 🙂

lawnmowerman

Hey! That's a pretty ingenious solution!

I'm not sure if you're doing this or not, but you could use a cron job to automagically build a list of files in the filesystem below the page's root directory. Then you'd only have to search that file for the matching file and update that file once every 20 minutes (or whatever suits your needs) instead of searching the filesystem each time a page is accessed.

That should noticeably improve performance during high load times with several to many concurrent customers. Depending on the number of files in the filesystem, you may even see a performance increase with a single user!

Good luck!

-Rich

Anon

Great Rich, you gave me help again!!! Thank you very much. The way I mentioned b4 is working now but I'm going to use your way asap. I believe it'll be much much better. 🙂

lawnmowerman

No problem, Dan!

I've heard of some people saying that PHP is slow when
compared to, say, Perl, but generally, if PHP is running noticeably slower, there are usually portions which can be substantially optimized, in my experience. No flames, please 🙂

-Rich

Anon

Hello guys,

I want to redirect my users from :
http://www.acme.com/profile?user=herve to http://www.acme.com/herve . Any idea how to do this ?

Herve

Anon

do you want to do it by apache setting or by php?

Anon

What is the best solution ?
I would prefer with php.