Question

Our web server is structured as follows

/path-to-docdir     [Contains main pages]
        ./app/      [Some application not directly related to the main content]

The main pages are served fine. In the app directory I am trying to use mod_rewrite to redirect all pages to an index.php in a public directory

So a request to

/server/app/start/login/ => /server/app/public/index.php 
/server/app/start/login  => /server/app/public/index.php
/server/app/start/login?name=someone => /server/app/public/index.php?name=someone

The front controller relies on the last two components of the REQUEST_URI string to interpret controller and action.

To do the above I have created the following .htaccess file in the app directory

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteRule ^$     public/   [L]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Here, I find that the server goes in a redirect loop for the above URLs. I tried replacing $1 with index.php and that does bring up the page, but the internal references within the page to script files run into errors.

After some searching around, I added the following line:

RewriteBase /app/

And that did not seem to make any difference. I should also note that everything works as expected if I make the app directory as the server root directory.

I’ve also turned on debug logging and all I could gather from that was that the server was indeed going into a redirect loop.

[perdir /path-to-docdir/app/] internal redirect with /app/public/public/public/public/public/public/public/public/public/public/public/start/login/ [INTERNAL REDIRECT]

I’m not really sure where to start looking at this point, so any help or pointers to move me further would be much appreciated.

Edit:

This htaccess file worked for me – if anyone else is looking for a solution. Apparently, I was missing rewrite conditions

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/index.php?$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Answer 1

A few points:

A RewriteBase path does not need a trailing slash, so RewriteBase /app/ should be RewriteBase /app.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 makes RewriteRule ^$ public/ superfluous. The former will match http://yourserver/app and internally rewrite as http://yourserver/app/public, so there’s no need for the latter.

Finally, try adding a rewrite condition:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /app
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/app/public/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]