Question

I am currently using two .htaccess files for my website: one is the development version, and the other one is the production version. The difference is in absolute and some relative paths that are used for RedirectMatch, RewriteRule, and ErrorDocument directives, and that differ between development and production. I am using a git hook to remove the dev version and rename the production version, but this still means I have to maintain two versions of basically the same file. Also, I am encountering similar problems with other sites I manage, so this all means more work. I rather have one single file and some sort of condition in the .htaccess file that allows me to say if production -> use these, else -> use these. Can I do such thing in an .htaccess file?

I have found this:

.htaccess between developemt, staging, and production

But this is for rewrite rules and would not fix the different ErrorDocument paths.

Answer 1

If your servers are running Apache 2.3 or higher, you can use an <if expr> directive like this:

<if "%{HTTP_HOST} == 'dev.example.com'">
    # dev directives
</if>
<if "%{HTTP_HOST} == 'www.example.com'">
    # prod directives
</if>

Earlier versions of Apache will throw a 500 Server Error if you use <if>, be sure to check the Apache version before trying this.