Question

here is my configuration:

• http://domain.com (obviously fictitious name…) hosted on a server running Apache with mod_rewrite enabled
• folder named “foo”: (located at http://domain.com/foo/ and in which I want to put my .htaccess file) containing only 3 types of files .php, .htm, .html
  • .php files (for the sake of the example I will refer to one of them: phpfile.php)
  • .htm files (for the sake of the example I will refer to one of them: htmfile.htm)
  • .html files (for the sake of the example I will refer to one of them: htmlfile.html)
• within the foo folder, no file has an equivalent with another extension or without extension (ie eg neither phpfile.htm nor phpfile.html nor phpfile exist in foo, only php.file.php does exist)

Here is what I am trying to achieve:

• when entering http://domain.com/foo/phpfile.php or http://domain.com/foo/htmfile.htm or http://domain.com/foo/htmlfile.html in my browser’s address bar and hitting “Enter”:
  • I get redirected with a 301 to http://domain.com/foo/phpfile or http://domain.com/foo/htmfile or http://domain.com/foo/htmlfile (depending on the file I’ve chosen), that is to say that those latters are the URLs now displayed in the address bar
• when entering http://domain.com/foo/phpfile or http://domain.com/foo/htmfile or http://domain.com/foo/htmlfile in my browser’s address bar and hitting “Enter”:
  • I don’t get redirected, nothing changes in the address bar but instead the server just serves me the phpfile.php or the htmfile.htm or the htmlfile.html, depending on which one I requested

I have been trying hard on this, and sofar I’ve came with this content for my .htaccess file (located in the “foo” folder), which is unfortunately only working in the last of the two cases, in which I am interested (ie serving “phpfile.php” when I request “phpfile”, serving “htmfile.htm” when I request “htmfile” or serving “htmlfile.html” when I request “htmlfile”), and which is ignoring the 301 redirections:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /foo

# Redirect permanently the requests for existing .php files
# to extensionless files (non present on the server)
# so that phpfile.php gets redirected to phpfile
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \.php$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f 
RewriteRule (.*)\.php$ $1   [R=301,NC]

# Redirect permanently the requests for existing .htm(l) files
# to extensionless files (non present on the server)
# so that htmfile.htm gets redirected to htmfile
# so that htmlfile.html gets redirected to htmlfile
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \.html?$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html? -f   
RewriteRule (.*)\.html?$ $1 [R=301,NC]

# Matching requests for non existing extensionless files
# with their existing equivalent on the server
# so that domain.com/foo/phpfile will display
# the contents of domain.com/foo/phpfile.php,
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f 
RewriteRule (.*)$ $1.php    [L]

# so that domain.com/foo/htmlfile will display
# the contents of domain.com/foo/htmlfile.html,
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f    
RewriteRule (.*)$ $1.html   [L]

# so that domain.com/foo/htmfile will display
# the contents of domain.com/foo/htmfile.htm,
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.htm -f 
RewriteRule (.*)$ $1.htm    [L]

Thank you in advance for any help/ advice.

Answer 1

There’s a logic flaw in the first two rules in that it’s the php or html file that exists. The URI check is also in effect a duplicate of the rewrite rule pattern and !f implies !-d. You can also fold these into a single rule:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)\.(php|html?)$        $1   [R=301,NC]

The last two are OK, but I’d swap the order if html requests are more common than php

Why MultiViews doesn’t help

Options +MultiViews implements a concept known as content negotiation, and in doing this Apache invokes a subquery to parse the filename root name. One of the things that it does is to scan the directory for known filename.extension combinations so in this case if xxx.php exists and your request is for xxx then it will substitute xxx.php and do an internal redirection, which then causes your first rule to fire, removing the .php extension and this causes the error that you see.

So (i) you need to disable multiviews, and (ii) ditto subqueries; (iii) detect and prevent retry loops. This is one solution which will do what you want:

Options +FollowSymLinks  -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /foo

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_END}  =1
RewriteRule ^ - [L,NS]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)\.(php|html?)$        $1   [R=301,NC,NS]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule (.*)$ $1.html   [L,E=END:1,NS]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.htm -f
RewriteRule (.*)$ $1.htm    [L,E=END:1,NS]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule (.*)$ $1.php    [L,E=END:1,NS]