Trailing slashes on directories

[jacksonheights]

I want my site to follow a convention of not using trailing slashes (regardless of file or directory). Is it possible to configure apache in a way that navigating to www.sitename.com/directory does not issue a 301 redirect to www.sitename.com/directory/ and just returns the same content?

[dklynn]

JH,

That depends upon your host. I’m not sure what the Apache directive is to NOT add a trailing slash but, if your host is forcing the trailing /, you can’t do anything about it.

Hint: Ask your host.

With mod_rewrite, you CAN remove the trailing / (provided Apache will allow it via httpd.conf) with code like:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [R=301,L]

Regards,

DK

[jacksonheights]

I do have full control over the server so I can add any directives I need.

With your mod_rewrite rule above, wouldn’t this cause an endless loop since apache is forcing redirects for urls with missing trailing slashes?

thanks.

[dklynn]

JH,

Yes, if the server is forcing trailing slashes, LOOPY!

@Apache.org

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_dir.html#directoryslash

Security Warning

Turning off the trailing slash redirect may result in an information disclosure. Consider a situation where mod_autoindex is active (Options +Indexes) and DirectoryIndex is set to a valid resource (say, index.html) and there’s no other special handler defined for that URL. In this case a request with a trailing slash would show the index.html file. But a request without trailing slash would list the directory contents.

Regards,

DK