Question

I currently try to translate a .htaccess file which is provided by the chyrp installation routine to lighttpd via the mod_rewrite module.

The source .htaccess file is as follows:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase {$index}
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^.+$ index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Directory layout (webroot)

/chyrp/
/chyrp/includes/
/chyrp/admin/
/chyrp/feathers/
/chyrp/modules/
/chyrp/themes/

My current attempt

    index-file.names = ( "index.php" )
    url.access-deny = ( ".twig" )

    #taking care of the directory, check if it is one of the known ones, if so go on
    #if it is not, redirect to index
    url.rewrite-once = (
            "^/(|chyrp/)(admin|themes|feathers|modules|includes)(.*)$" => "/chyrp/$2$3",
            "^/(|chyrp/).*/$" => "/chyrp/index.php"
    )

    #check if files exists, if not rewrite to a index.php in the same directory
    url.rewrite-if-not-file = (
            "^/(|chyrp/)(admin|themes|feathers|modules|includes)(/(index.php)?(.*))?$" => "/chyrp/$2/index.php$5",
            "^/(|chyrp/)(.*)" => "/chyrp/index.php"
    )

It mostly works, except for the search functionality (testable here: srctwig.com), which does not rewrite correctly (at least that’s my guess) or somewhere the query gets lost.
The search routine itself works properly (demonstration search with 0 results)
A working demo of chyrp can be seen at chyrp demo on apache2

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The reason for the issue was, I was not aware of having to dissect the url in order to extract the get query string which I needed to preserve according to a lighttpd mod_rewrite wiki entry

    url.rewrite-once = (
            "^/(|chyrp/)(admin|themes|feathers|modules|includes)/(.*)$" => "/chyrp/$2/$3",
            "^/(|chyrp/).+/(([^\?]+)?(\?.+)?)$" => "/chyrp/index.php$2"
    )

    url.rewrite-if-not-file = (
        "^/(|chyrp/)(admin|themes|feathers|modules|includes)(/([^\?]+)?(\?.+)?)?$" => "/chyrp/$2/index.php$5",
        "^/(|chyrp/)(([^\?]+)?(\?.+)?)$" => "/chyrp/index.php$2",
        "^/(|chyrp/).*$" => "/chyrp/index.php"
    )

Dissect:

url.rewrite-once

"^/(|chyrp/)(admin|themes|feathers|modules|includes)/(.*)$" => "/chyrp/$2/$3",

These directories exist. Do not change anything except for ensuring the proper prefix if not alread there.

"^/(|chyrp/).+/(([^\?]+)?(\?.+)?)$" => "/chyrp/index.php$2"

Check if a non existant subdir was requested and check for ?, treat everything after that as php get query and append it to the rewrite target.

url.rewrite-if-not-file

"^/(|chyrp/)(admin|themes|feathers|modules|includes)(/([^\?]+)?(\?.+)?)?$" => "/chyrp/$2/index.php$5",

if the target does not exist just swap out the filename and keep the query (as above)

"^/(|chyrp/)(([^\?]+)?(\?.+)?)$" => "/chyrp/index.php$2",

go to the basefolder if none of the above matches and try to still pass the query

"^/(|chyrp/).*$" => "/chyrp/index.php"

this very last one is just for testing (put foobarfailure.php there to assert it never reaches that line)