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igortp
Asked: 2020-05-06 01:05:57 +0800 CST

Adding RewriteRule to <Directory> to allow a link to anchor a Section in the same page

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I used to host my websites with third-party hosting service and anchoring links was always easy. Then I decided to set my VPS. Everything is working well, besides the anchor links.

I found out that Apache, by default, doesn't allow me to use some symbols when accessing URLs, but also that is possible to use mod_rewrite to solve that. According to Apache's documentation, whenever I can choose between adding rewrite rules via <Directory> instead of using .htaccess files, I should do that. Also, to enable the rewrite engine, RewriteEngine On and Options FollowSymLinks must be enabled. Considering that I'm already using RewriteRules to force access through HTTPS (and this is working), I believe my system is ready to receive RewriteRules.

Therefore, I added the rewrite rule to <Directory> but it's not reaching the expected result, which is instead of accessing mydomain.com/pageA/sectionB, access the anchor mydomain.com/pageA#sectionB. Maybe I'm adding the RewriteRule to the wrong place since I found in Apache's documentation this rule to do exactly what I expect. Am I doing something wrong? Follow my ".conf" file.

<VirtualHost *:80> 
  Servername mydomain.com 
  ServerAlias www.mydomain.com 

  RewriteEngine on 
  RewriteCond %(SERVER_NAME) =mydomain.com [OR] 
  RewriteCond %(SERVER_NAME) =www.mydomain.com 
  RewriteRule https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END=301,L] 
</VirtualHost> 

<VirtualHost _default_:443> 
  ServerAdmin [email protected] 
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mydomain.com/ 
  ServerName mydomain.com 
  ServerAlias www.mydomain.com 

<Directory /var/www/html/mydomain.com/> 
  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews 
  AllowOverride ALL 
  Order allow,deny 
  Allow from all 

  RewriteEngine on 
  RewriteRule "^/pageA/sectionB/" "/pageA#sectionB/" [NE,R]
</Directory> 

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log 
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined 

SSLEngine on 
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/my_certificate.cer 
SSLCertificatekeyFile /etc/ssl/private/my_key.key 

</VirtualHost>
apache2 mod-rewrite

1 Answers

  1. RewriteRule "^/pageA/sectionB/" "/pageA#sectionB/" [NE,R]

    This directive won't match when used in a directory context (ie. inside a <Directory> container or .htaccess), because of the slash prefix on the URL-path you are trying to match. In a directory context, the directory-prefix (which always ends with a slash) is first removed from the URL-path that the RewriteRule directive matches against, so the URL-path never starts with a slash.

    So, you basically, just need to remove the slash prefix:

    RewriteRule ^pageA/sectionB/ /pageA#sectionB/ [NE,R,L]

    I've also removed the quotes around the arguments (these are only strictly necessary if the argument contains unescaped spaces, otherwise it's just a bit harder to read IMO). It's good practise to always include the L flag on external redirects - although this is currently the last rule, so it doesn't really matter (except if you add more rules later).

    OR, you move this rule to directly inside the <VirtualHost> container (ie. a virtualhost context). In this case the RewriteRule directive matches against the root-relative URL-path which includes the slash prefix.

    This would actually be preferable in this instance since any .htaccess mod_rewrite directives will override the <Directory> container and your RewriteRule directive in the <Directory> container won't be processed (unless mod_rewrite inheritance is enabled - it's disabled by default).

    Since you have set AllowOverride ALL in the <Directory> container it is assumed you do have (or at least potential to have) an .htaccess file that could possibly contain mod_rewrite directives. If you disable .htaccess overrides (ie. AllowOverride None) then it doesn't matter.

    Aside:

    RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %(SERVER_NAME) =mydomain.com [OR] 
RewriteCond %(SERVER_NAME) =www.mydomain.com 
RewriteRule https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END=301,L]

    This (HTTP to HTTPS redirect) is entirely incorrect/malformed. You are missing the RewriteRule pattern (first) argument and the flags argument is malformed. They should read [R=301,L].

    However, you don't need to use mod_rewrite here, when used inside a <VirtualHost *:80> container a simple mod_alias Redirect directive is sufficient and preferred.

    Unless you are also implementing HSTS, you should also redirect to the canonical hostname:

    For example:

    Redirect 301 / https://example.com/
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