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Bobby Jack
Asked: 2013-06-19 16:17:31 +0800 CST

mod_negotiation and mod_rewrite

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I'm trying to configure a URL scheme that a) allows the ".html" extension to be omitted and b) sends 403 (Forbidden) errors under certain conditions. However, with the following setup:

Options +MultiViews
RewriteRule ^foo/bar$ - [F]

If I request /foo/bar I get a 404 (Not Found) error complete with a 'None could be negotiated' line in the error log. Requesting /foo/bar.html does work, so I'm guessing that the content-negotiation is taking 'priority' over the RewriteRule and keeps looking for alternative URLs until it finds a 200. In fact, I've pretty much confirmed that by testing with a bar.txt file and a RewriteRule that only targets the .html file.

So, is there a way of modifying mod_negotiation's behaviour to 'give up' as soon as it encounters a Forbidden error?

UPDATE

NB: It looks as though I can workaround the problem by disabling MultiViews and using mod_rewrite instead e.g.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule !.*\.html$ %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html [L]

but I'm guessing that's less efficient, and it's a lot more config to deal with

apache-2.2

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Based on the fact that you're omitting your leading slash from ^foo, I'm guessing that this is configured in a <Directory> block or htaccess file?

    That's actually the cause of the problem in this case; in that context, the rewrite rules are applied after the request has been mapped to the file system (and the .html has been tacked on).

    From the docs:

    In VirtualHost context, The Pattern will initially be matched against the part of the URL after the hostname and port, and before the query string (e.g. "/app1/index.html").

    In Directory and htaccess context, the Pattern will initially be matched against the filesystem path, after removing the prefix that led the server to the current RewriteRule (e.g. "app1/index.html" or "index.html" depending on where the directives are defined).

    Move your RewriteRule configuration up to the <VirtualHost> context (and modify your match accordingly, from ^foo/bar$ to ^/foo/bar$), and it should work as expected.

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