Rewrite Rule Problem

[cjhowland]

I am trying to map a domain to a subdirectory of a hosting account using a rewrite rule in .htaccess. This works fine if just the domain name is entered, but if a subdirectory of the mapped domain is entered the location is found, but the location bar resolves to the file path of the main domain, unless a trailing '/' is keyed with the URL

For example :

"

http://www.mumps.biz"

works fine
"

http://www.mumps.biz/tuesday/"

works fine
"

http://www.mumps.biz/tuesday"

redirects to

http://www.mbassy.co.uk/sites/mumps.biz/tuesday/

which is not the desired effect.

The .htaccess rewrite entries are as follows :

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(

http://www\.)?mumps\.biz$

[NC]
RewriteRule !^sites/mumps.biz /sites/mumps\.biz%{REQUEST_URI} [L]

I've tried putting a trailing slash in the last line, i.e
RewriteRule !^sites/mumps.biz /sites/mumps\.biz%/{REQUEST_URI} [L]

but this then results in

http://www.mumps.biz

redirecting to

http://www.mbassy.co.uk/sites/mumps.biz,

whereas it leaves

http://www.mumps.biz/

in the location bar as I have it now.

I want

http://www.mumps.biz

to look to visitors like a fully independant domain, and not show in the location bar anything to do with the actual domain that the files reside on.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[siberian]

Its the infamous 'Trailing Slash Problem'.

Check it out here

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/misc/rewriteguide.html

Search for 'Trailing Slash Problem'

Hopefully that helps. Its perfectly expected behavior, just has to be worked around.

 

[cjhowland]

Thanks, that is exactly the problem. However, I can't work out from this document exactly what I need to do to resolve the issue. I tried adding the following to the top level .htaccess, as per the document :

RewriteBase /sites/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ $1/ [R]

but then, although

http://www.mumps.biz/tuesday/

still serves correctly,

http://www.mumps.biz/tuesday

gives a page not found.

 

[cjhowland]

I've searched the forum and found, with a bit of tweeking, that the following seems to work :

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([/A-Za-z0-9_]*)?([A-Za-z0-9_]+)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)

http://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/

[L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(

http://www\.)?mumps\.biz$

[NC]
RewriteRule !^sites/mumps.biz /sites/mumps\.biz%{REQUEST_URI} [L]

Hope that helps other people. The key seemed to be using the [L] option instead of [R] on the first RewriteRule. To be honest I don't know what the difference is, but it works on my site :

See

http://www.mumps.biz/tuesday

which now leaves the URL unchanged in the location bar, and shows the same page as

http://www.mumps.biz/tuesday/

I now have a domain running within a subdirectory of another domain but appearing to visitors as if it is a full hosted domain.