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morgant
Asked: 2009-10-23 12:34:54 +0800 CST

Why is this mod_rewrite RewriteRule directive not working in the .htaccess file?

  • 772

I've got a site that was hosted on a linux el cheapo hosting service that I'm migrating to my Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Server server running Apache 2.2.8 & PHP 5.2.5 w/rewrite_module enabled and AllowOverride All, but I'm running into an issue with the following lines in the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
#RewriteRule ^view/([^/\.]+)/?$ /view.php?item=$1 [L]
#RewriteRule ^order/([^/\.]+)/?$ /order.php?item=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^category/([^/\.]+)/?$ /category.php?category=$1 [L]

As you can see, I've commented out the RewriteRule directives for /view/ and /order/, so I'm only dealing with /category/. When I attempt to load http://domain.tld/category/2/ it runs category.php (I've added debug code to confirm), but $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] comes through as /category/2/ and $_GET['category'] comes through as empty.

I'm usually fine with troubleshooting .htaccess files and mod_rewrite directives, but this one's got me stumped for some reason.

Update: I followed Josh's suggestion and here's the what's dumped to mod_rewrite.log when I try to access http://domain.tld/category/2/:

65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /category/13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) applying pattern '.*' to uri '/category/13'
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (1) pass through /category/13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] add path info postfix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php -> /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 -> category.php/13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri 'category.php/13'
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] add path info postfix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php -> /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 -> category.php/13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri 'category.php/13'
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) applying pattern '.*' to uri '/13'
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (1) pass through /13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/13 -> 13
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri '13'
65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/13
linux

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    just add this to your .htaccess file

    Options -MultiViews

    i've had the same problem for hours

    i don't know why, but it's turned on by default on OSX

    it produces your error because when you try loading category/ it finds the category.php and redirects everything after the slash to that file

    • 6

  2. Do you have access to httpd.conf? If so please add to httpd.conf:

    RewriteLog "/tmp/mod_rewrite.log" 
RewriteLogLevel 3

    And post what that log says when you load /category/2. Remove this after you get the information you need from it -- it's very wasteful of server resources.

    EDIT:

    Thanks for the log. Something is rewriting the URL to: /category.php/13. Any other RewriteRules? Are you using FastCGI? What if you rename category.php to something else, like Category.php or display_category.php?

    EDIT2:

    Since something seems to be rewriting /category/(.*) to /category/$1, and we don't know what it is, why don't you change:

    RewriteRule ^category/([^/\.]+)/?$ /category.php?category=$1 [L]

    to:

    RewriteRule ^category.php/([^/\.]+)/?$ /category.php?category=$1 [L]

    and see if that works?

    • 1

  3. I'm probably being an idiot here, but isn't that the expected behavior? Mod_rewrite changes the URL inline for finding the file, the environment variables seen by PHP don't normally change.

    I think you have to parse the REQUEST_URI string to pull out the category variable.

    Mark

    • 0