Question

I want everything to be redirected to index.php, so I thought this should work:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?url=$1 [L]

..but it doesn’t. This very similar RewriteRule does work though:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule matches/(.*) /index.php?url=$1 [L]

I later found out that to make the first one work you need:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

Can someone please explain why the last RewriteCond is needed in the former example but not the latter?

Answer 1

Because first rule will rewrite already rewritten URL.

RewriteRule Last [L] flag not working?

For example:

• Original request: /hello/pink-kitten
• 1st (initial) rewrite: /index.php?url=hello/pink-kitten
• 2nd cycle: rewritten to /index.php?url=index.php
• 3rd cycle: rewritten to /index.php?url=index.php
• No more cycles, as 3rd cycle produced the same result as 2nd

Why rule works if added that condition? Because the condition clearly says — only do rewrite if requested URL is not file. Therefore, on 2nd cycle URL will not be rewritten again as /index.php is a file, therefore no more cycles.

Why 2nd rule works just like that? Because it already has condition built in — URL should contain matches/ in it, and rewritten URL /index.php?url= as you can see has no matches/ part in it.