Question

On my website, when somebody requests a directory, I want it to remove the ‘/’ and add ‘.html’ (minus the quotes, of course).

Example:
If someone goes to domain.com/directory/ it should redirect to domain.com/directory.html/ and the same should stand for: domain.com/another-directory/ should redirect to domain.com/another-directory.html.

I would like to place a line (or two) of code to my htaccess file that will make any directory (URL ending with /) redirect to URL.html (removing the / of course).

I would also like it to visually redirect, so the user will actually see it change to .html.

I’m quite a novice web programmer, and any help is greatly appreciated.

Note: I did use Redirect /directory /directory.html and that worked, but that requires a lot of extra coding, and I would much prefer one simple statement to cover all directories.

Answer 1

This is going to be a bit difficult with htaccess, I assume you want to do the following:

1. If someone accesses a directory that isn’t the root (simply http://domain.com/), redirect them to the directory name ending with .html
2. After the get redirected, internally rewrite the .html back to the directory so apache can serve the directory.

First one is straightforward:

# check to make sure the request isn't actually for an html file
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !^([A-Z]{3,9})\ /(.+)\.html\ HTTP
# check to make sure the request is for a directory that exists
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
# rewrite the directory to 
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ /$1.html [R]

Second part is tricky

# check to make sure the request IS for an html file
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^([A-Z]{3,9})\ /(.+)\.html\ HTTP
# See if the directory exists if you strip off the .html
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%2 -d
# Check for an internal rewrite token that we add
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !r=n
# if no token, rewrite and add token (so that directories with index.html won't get looped)
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html /$1/?r=n [L,QSA]

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However, if what you just have is a bunch of files called directory.html, directory2.html, directory3.html, etc. and you want to make it so when someone enters http://domain.com/directory2/ into their address bar they get served the contents of directory2.html, it will be much simpler:

# check to make sure the request isn't actually for an html file
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !^([A-Z]{3,9})\ /(.+)\.html\ HTTP
# check to see if the html file exists (need to do this to strip off the trailing /)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.+)/$ 
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%1.html -f
# rewrite
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ /$1.html [L]