Question

So I’m trying to get mod_rewrite to do a few different things, and I’m not quite there with it. I’d like to:

1. Remove file extensions from the URLs (in this case, .shtml)

2. Rewrite certain URLs like so:

   /dashboard       -> /ui/dashboard/index.shtml
   /dashboard/      -> /ui/dashboard/index.shtml
   /dashboard/list  -> /ui/dashboard/list.shtml
   /dashboard/list/ -> /ui/dashboard/list.shtml
   /workspace       -> /ui/workspace/index.shtml
   /workspace/      -> /ui/workspace/index.shtml
   /account/manage  -> /ui/account/manage.shtml
   /account/manage/ -> /ui/account/manage.shtml
   

3. Either add or remove a trailing slash ( I don’t care which, as long as it’s consistent)

What I currently have gets me about 90% of the way there. In my .htaccess file, I’ve got the following:

DirectoryIndex index.shtml index.html index.htm

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

  Options +FollowSymlinks
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /

  # Get rid of the /ui/ in the URLs
  RewriteRule ^(account|workspace|dashboard)([a-zA-Z0-9\-_\.\/]+)?$ /ui/$1$2 [NC,L]

  # Add the trailing slash
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/|#(.*))$
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1/ [R=301,L]

  # Remove the shtml extension
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.shtml -f
  RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)/$ $1\.shtml

</IfModule>

Now the issues I’m running into are twofold:

First, if I try to access one of the index pages outlined in the directories listed in step 2 above, as long as I do it with a trailing slash, it’s fine, but if I omit the trailing slash, the URL rewrites incorrectly (the page still loads, however). For example

/dashboard/   remains /dashboard/ in the address bar.
/dashboard    rewrites to /ui/dashboard/ in the address bar.

How can I get these index.shtml pages to keep the address bar consistent?

Second, when I try to access a page other than the directory index in one of the rewritten directories, and I include a trailing slash, it gives me a 404 error. For instance:

/dashboard/list/

throws the 404 error:

The requested URL /ui/dashboard/list.shtml/ was not found on this server.

Any help to get this working properly that you can offer is much appreciated.

Answer 1

So I’ve figured out an approach that works for what I need. Here’s the .htaccess I came up with, commented inline:

# Match URLs that aren't a file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

# nor a directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

# if it's the index page of the directory we want, show that and go no further
RewriteRule ^(account|workspace|dashboard)/?$ /ui/$1/index.shtml [L]

# If we've gotten here, we're dealing with something other than the directory index.
# Let's remove the trailing slash internally
# This takes care of my second issue in my original question
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [L]

# Do the rewrite for the the non-directory-index files. 
RewriteRule ^(account|workspace|dashboard)([a-zA-Z0-9\-_\.\/]+)?$ /ui/$1$2 [L]

Not sure if this is the most efficient way to do this, but it’s working for my needs. Thought I’d share it here in case it helps anyone else.