Question

I am trying to do forward all incoming requests to https, except if the url contains /axis2 (http://locatlhost/axis2) in URL. This is what I have written (in my httpd.conf file):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/axis2$ [NC]
RewriteRule $ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R]

This is not working and I am unable to debug why. Can anyone help me.

Answer 1

Have you set up a separate VirtualHost for port 443?

if yes try removing the __default__ from the VirtualHost directive in your ssl.conf / VirtualHost directive set by ssl.

Which should look like this:

<VirtualHost _default_:443>

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First of all I would suggest you to add this in your VirtualHost. To log the activities or mod_rewrite. It Will be helpful for debugging and higher the RewriteLogLevel better for debugging.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteLog "/path/to/your/rewrite.log"
RewriteLogLevel 3

From RewriteLogLevel ^Docs:

To disable the logging of rewriting actions simply set Level to 0. This disables all rewrite action logs.
Using a high value for Level will slow down your Apache server dramatically! Use the rewriting logfile at a Level greater than 2 only for debugging!

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Try this for your issue:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/?axis2/(?:.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)(/?axis2/)(.*)$ https://$1$2$3 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}%{QUERY_STRING} [L,QSA,R=301]

If the %{REQUEST_URI} does not start and end with /axis2 or axis2/ or/axis2/ or axis2 it will redirect your URIs to https and stop any further rule rewriting.

Else, only this will execute:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}%{QUERY_STRING} [L,R=301]

R=301 means a permanent redirection. If just R is specified, a temporary redirect i.e. 302 will be done.