Question

I was wondering how I would do a complex mod_rewrite. Below is basically how I want it done.

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If the user goes to:

-http://files.stuff.example.txt.r.site.com/doc.txt

Then the server would rewrite the url to:

-http://r.site.com/index.php?type=txt&username=example&dir=files.stuff&file=doc.txt

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Better picture:

-http://[dir3-dir2-dir1].[username].[type].r.site.com/[file]

Rewrites to:

-http://r.site.com/index.php?type=[type]&username=[username]&dir=[dir3.dir2.dir1]&file=[file]

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I created a colour coded image to clearly show what I mean:

(can’t embed images) look here:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/24H8j.png

The first subdomains are a directory structure (shown in red), so the amount of subdomains can change.

I hope someone can provide me with a solution. Either using mod_rewrite or maybe another method. Thanks.

Answer 1

Provided that you have configured your DNS so that requested URL hits server where your application is (maybe wildcard DNS on your domain: *.site.com -> 123.45.67.89, if supported by your DNS server/hosting), you can create more or less complicated rewrite rule. I’d do it this way:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*).r.site.com$
RewriteCond $1 !^index.php
RewriteRule (.*) index.php?subdomain_part=%1&file_part=$1

So in index.php you get $_GET['subdomain_part'] and $_GET['file_part'], which you can parse further to extract parameters according to your convention.

Of course, you can write more complicated regex to get URL parts extracted by mod_rewrite (I’m not such an regex expert myself). However doing parsing in PHP would be much easier and you can do better error handling (e.g. if URL is not formed properly).