Question

I have this application that I want to support multi languages.
I thought the easiest way would be to use sub domains aka

http://fr.domain.com/content

Now I created the sub domain on my server, pointing to the main root and indeed, the above URL is accessible.
The problem now are all my links, which are absolute.
Is there a way with mod_rewrite to catch the language from the URL and than rewrite the links to the same sub domain URL?

So if we are on http://fr.domain.com/content and click the link http://domain.com/link I want the page to load as http://fr.domain.com/link

Is that possible?
Cheers!

Answer 1

You would probably have to check HTTP_REFERER if you want to do this through apache. It might be good to start updating the site so that the links are dynamic in the future…

Something like (I can’t really test this currently):

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^[a-z]{2}\.host\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([a-z]{2})\.host.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://%1.host.com/$1 [R,L,QSA]

EDIT: removed a NOT in the 3rd condition

You might have to check some other conditions, but test things out to figure out what works. Plus, if you do other redirects you need a way to maintain the original referrer. In some ways even with the links the way they are, it may be easier to do this through a more dynamic means with php (through session) or something.

I was using these:

http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mod_rewrite-variables-cheatsheet.html#HTTP_REFERER

http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/modrewrite-tips-tricks.html