Question

I’d like to use mod rewrite in to convert web page addresses like /directory to /directory/index.html, in a standard LAMP hosting situation. What I have works for addresses that end in a slash. I can’t find a way to handle addresses that don’t end a slash.

What seems like it should work is:

rewriterule ^(.*)/$ $1/index.html [L] /* addresses ending in / */ rewriterule ^(.*(?!html))$ $1/index.html [L] /* where the problem is */ 

But the second line causes a 500 server error. If I add a single letter x to the second line:

rewriterule ^(.*)/$ $1/index.html [L] rewriterule ^(.*x(?!html))$ $1/index.html [L] 

It starts to work, but only for directory names that end in an x. I have tried replacing the x with many different things. Anything more complicated than real characters (like [^x] or .+) gives a 500 server error.

And, to satisfy my own curiosity, does anyone know why the addition of a single real letter makes the difference between a server error and a perfectly functioning rule?

[Accepted Answer] Thanks to Gumbo I was able to approximate a solution using rewritecond:

 rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.[^/]+$ rewriterule (.+) $1/index.html [L] 

This works, but filters more than just .html — it could block other pages. Unfortunately,

rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.html$ 

results in a server error:

Request exceeded the limit of 10 internal redirects due to probable configuration error. Use ‘LimitInternalRecursion’ to increase the limit if necessary.

I’d still like to know why:

rewriterule ^(.*(?!html))$ $1/index.html [L] 

results in a loop. The first half is supposed to check if it doesn’t end in .html. Since the second half adds .html, it seems like the functional equivalent of:

 while(substr($address,-4)!='html') $address.='html' 

Obviously I’m missing something.

Answer 1

Use a RewriteCond directive to check whether the URL path does not end with a .html:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.html$ RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])?/?$ $1/index.html [L] 

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Edit   You’re using a look-ahead assertion ((?!…)). But there isn’t anything after .* (only a $). So try a look-behind assertion instead:

RewriteRule ^.*$(?<!html) $0/index.html [L] 

But note that you probably need Apache 2.2 to use these assertions.