Question

I’m having problems the .htaccess file, normally it checks the user referer and if is from my site it allows the access to stream mp4 files, but now I want to allow the streaming to Android and iOS devices, I’m using html5 tag but it doesn’t send http_referer so I want to check the user agent to allow the stream of the mp4 files, this is what I have but it just doesn’t work.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "Android|iPod|iPhone|iPad" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(direct\.|www\.)?mysite\.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(mp4)$ http://www.mysite.com [R,NC]

Answer 1

You are using a negation here, so you have to lose the [OR] and include a !:

 RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !(Android|iPod|iPhone|iPad) [NC]

What your rule is doing is redirecting when it is not the correct referer and is not a mobile user-agent. What you had before:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(direct\.|www\.)?mysite\.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(mp4)$ http://www.mysite.com [R,NC]

Is saying: If the referer isn’t from http://(direct\.|www\.)?mysite\.com/, then redirect the .mp4 request to http://www.mysite.com. The logic here is if the referer is correct, they can get to the mp4 file just fine.

To follow the logic where you say if the referer is correct or if the user-agent is mobile, serve the mp4, you need to negate the entire thing. (A or B)-> do something, to !(A or B) -> don't do something, which translates to: !A and !B -> don't do something.

So you need to negate the mobile user-agent check and instead of an OR use an AND (which is what is default for rewrite conditions).