Eschew Obfuscation: Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf

Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf

Max Dunn — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 15:08:00 -0800

This is probably obvious to people who know Apache well, but I just spent a half day struggling with the differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf. I was assuming they would behave the same way, but there are slight differences:

Differences

httpd.conf

The request URI will have a leading slash
The leading slash needs to remain to find cached files
When using -f or !-f, it needs to have the document root on front

.htaccess

The request URI won’t have a leading slash
Can’t have a leading slash to find cached files
When using -f or !-f, don’t use the document root

Examples

Here is an example that looks in the public/cache directory for cached files:

httpd.conf


RewriteRule ^/$ /cache/index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^/([^.]+)$ /cache/$1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

.htaccess


RewriteRule ^$ cache/index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ cache/$1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

Rails

Just to complete this example, add this line to a before_filter method in application.rb to have Rails cache files to this directory:

ApplicationController::page_cache_directory = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/cache"

"Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf" by Mark Sennott

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:00:39 -0700

I would add that query strings (the part after the ? in a URL) is part of the URI for matching purposes in .htaccess, but gets stripped off for httpd.conf rules.

"Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf" by Michael Houghton

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:29:33 -0700

Useful – I reckoned the matches would be different but you’ve still saved me an hour or two hunting down this information.

"Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf" by Greg

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:00:30 -0800

Thanks much! Fixed my problem!

"Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf" by Peter

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:34:55 -0800

Yep works good. Just spent 2 hours trying to figure out this issue!

"Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf" by Brian Adkins

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:38:06 -0700

Man, I wish I read this an hour ago! Thanks for the info.

"Differences between RewriteRule in .htaccess and httpd.conf" by Gregory

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:08:55 -0700

Thanks for the tip! That’s very useful to know.