Question

I have a .htaccess file in my htdocs/MVC/ folder which looks like this

RewriteEngine On

# if its already been rewritten to the specific folder
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/MVC/public/img/(.*)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/MVC/public/index.php$
# skip next two rules
RewriteRule .? - [S=2]

# rewrite image requests
RewriteRule (.*\.(jpg|png|gif))$ public/img/$1 [L]
# rewrite all other requests to the front controller index.php
RewriteRule (.*) public/index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

What I want to achieve is all image requests going to the folder MVC/public/img all other requests going to the front controller index.php in the folder MVC/public. Is this the best way to set up those rules and prevent mod_rewrite to loop?

Answer 1

Using the S flag to skip is fine but the downside is:

1. it’s a little harder to read (if someone else is looking at it)
2. if you need to append new rules, you need to check the way it skips
3. if your rules gets increasingly more complex, it gets increasingly harder to maintain the correct skipping

Other possible ways of preventing looping:

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

Putting this at the very top of your rules will instantly stop rewriting altogether if a rule was applied (or a mod_alias redirect was applied) in the previous loop.

So it’ll look like this:

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

# rewrite image requests
RewriteRule (.*\.(jpg|png|gif))$ public/img/$1 [L]
# rewrite all other requests to the front controller index.php
RewriteRule (.*) public/index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

Pros: You never have to worry about looping, because the 2nd time around instantly ends with the ENV check
Cons: If you ever happen to need to create a rule that loops, this method will prevent it from ever working