Question

I am beginner in PHP and Apache. I am trying to use URL Rewriting for my website, which can have following URIs.

1. http://localhost:8080/home
2. http://localhost:8080/dell

For the first URI, there is home.php file available and I edited .htaccess file with following rewrite rule.

RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC]

Second URI is dynamic – means there is no dell.php available for it that could handle the request. So I wrote following RewriteCond.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ list.php?page=$1

So as a whole, my .htaccess file is

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC] [N]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ list.php?page=$1

So when I request localhost:8080/home, home.php is duly responded but when I request localhost:8080/dell, an error is responded

“The requested URL /dell.php was not found on this server.”

I think only first RewriteRule takes precedence and second one is not even read by Apache server. Changing order does not work either. My question here is what RewriteRule(s) should I use that could work in both case – PHP file exists & does not exist?

Thank you for your opinion and guidance.

Ritesh

Answer 1

You need to do a pre-emptive check against the %{REQUEST_FILENAME} with a .php after it to see if that exists before you try to rewrite it, otherwise URI’s like dell will get blindly rewritten:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [L]