.htaccess RewriteRule map URL to another

Server Config
1

hi,

I’ve developed a web program and let say the main url is http://domain.com

I will be distributing different URLs for different users, say http://domain.com/user1
and http://domain.com/user2

however, both this URLs will be pointing to the base code at http://domain.com. depending on whether is user1 or user2, the system configuration will extract from the respective database.

my question is, how do i use mod_rewrite to map the different urls to the main url with transparency.

I’ve managed to do it with alias in httpd.conf. e.g:
alias /user1 /var/www/html/myproject
alias /user2 /var/www/html/myproject

however, if i were to do this, i would have to restart apache every time i’ve got a new user. so i’ve decided to use .htaccess instead but realised that alias is not availble for it.

I’ve tried with rewriterule but with no success.

Please advise. thank you

2

What a lot of popular packages do (like WP), and what it seems like you’re doing is directing your users through to a main page for processing.

So, brush up on your regular expressions because that’s what mod_rewrite uses (there are plenty of good tutorials stickied at the top of this thread) and dig in.

First you’ll need to start the engines:

RewriteEngine on

Then apply some conditions to make sure you’re not actually requesting a real file or directory.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %(REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

Then, since your username is likely a set of characters and numbers this can be expressed in a regular expression [a-zA-Z0-9], so when that’s added.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %(REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule ^[a-zA-Z0-9]/?$ load_user.php [L]

Or

Rewrite Rule ^([a-zA-Z0-9])/?$ load_user.php?username=$1 [L]
3

Keep in mind that the caveat there is if users create their usernames the same names as your directories… so really you’d want to make them have a url like /u/[username]

4

EXCELLENT, Jack!

Regards,

DK

5

hey Jack, tks a lot for the code.

i place htaccess file in the main directory of the base code.
i tried access http://domain.com/user1 and it gave a 404 error

im sure mod_rewrite is enabled as i tried the following and it works:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.google.com/

############
updates
############
i hard-coded the directory and now it works:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %(REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^user1/?$ / [L]

so now http://domain.com/user1 works
but if i were to access other part of the program, e.g http://domain.com/user1/login/index.php, it did not point to http://domain.com/login/index.php but instead throw a 404 error

just for clarification, im not using user1 as a query string to define the respective database (domain.com?username=user1). in my base code at http://domain.com, it has a config file. when user access domain.com/user1, im gonna use this config file to extract “user1” from the url to pick out the respective database

6

Hey Jack,

I managed to find the solution.

What I did:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %(REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule [1](.*)$ /$1 [L]

Jack, thanks alot for this again. this solution has pretty much leave my mind at peace at least for a while.

  1. a-zA-Z0-9 ↩︎

7

Ah, that’s because there were two mistakes. Accidentally did (REQUEST_FILENAME} and [a-zA-Z0-9] was only catching 1 letter. So I forgot to add a quantifier.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule ^[a-zA-Z0-9]+/?$ load_user.php [L]

As for the solution you posted, in english it’s looking for 1 character that’s normal and then 0 or more characters of anything.

http://www.domain.com/d/omain/user would work in that scenario.