Question

I am trying to learn about mod_rewrite.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /

    #Removes access to the system folder by users.
    #Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
    #previously this would not have been possible.
    #'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /indexl.php?/$1 [L]

    #When your application folder isn't in the system folder
    #This snippet prevents user access to the application folder
    #Submitted by: Fabdrol
    #Rename 'application' to your applications folder name.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^application.*
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /indexl.php?/$1 [L]

    #Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
    #such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the
    #request to index.php
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ indexl.php?/$1 [L]

    </IfModule> 

This is the content of my .htacces file in CI. I use this file because supossedly it works on some other application. However this does not work if I change the name of the index.php I get the directory structure in the browser. So I am wondering if it is working even when the name of the file is index.php, or does it automaticly use index.php. Shouldnt this

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ indexl.php?/$1 [L]

redirect every request to indexl.php???

Answer 1

The RewriteRule snippet redirects depending the URL path given. If you specify an empty one with http://example.com/, then the -f and -d checks won’t fail. Thus there will be no rewriting to said indexl.php script.

And in absence of any index.* file (wether .php or .html) Apaches auto index (directory list) will take over.

You can however use:

DirectoryIndex indexl.php

So with an empty path your index script will still run.