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  <parentdocument href="./">Miscellaneous Documentation</parentdocument>

  <title>URL Rewriting Guide</title>

  <summary>
    <note>
      <p>Originally written by<br />
      <cite>Ralf S. Engelschall &lt;rse@apache.org&gt;</cite><br />
      December 1997</p>
    </note>

    <p>This document supplements the <module>mod_rewrite</module>
    <a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">reference documentation</a>.
    It describes how one can use Apache's <module>mod_rewrite</module>
    to solve typical URL-based problems webmasters are usually confronted
    with in practice. I give detailed descriptions on how to
    solve each problem by configuring URL rewriting rulesets.</p>

  </summary>

  <section id="ToC1">

    <title>Introduction to <code>mod_rewrite</code></title>

    <p>The Apache module <module>mod_rewrite</module> is a killer
    one, i.e. it is a really sophisticated module which provides
    a powerful way to do URL manipulations. With it you can nearly
    do all types of URL manipulations you ever dreamed about.
    The price you have to pay is to accept complexity, because
    <module>mod_rewrite</module>'s major drawback is that it is
    not easy to understand and use for the beginner. And even
    Apache experts sometimes discover new aspects where
    <module>mod_rewrite</module> can help.</p>

    <p>In other words: With <module>mod_rewrite</module> you either
    shoot yourself in the foot the first time and never use it again
    or love it for the rest of your life because of its power.
    This paper tries to give you a few initial success events to
    avoid the first case by presenting already invented solutions
    to you.</p>

  </section>

  <section id="ToC2">

    <title>Practical Solutions</title>

    <p>Here come a lot of practical solutions I've either invented
    myself or collected from other peoples solutions in the past.
    Feel free to learn the black magic of URL rewriting from
    these examples.</p>

    <note type="warning">ATTENTION: Depending on your server-configuration
    it can be necessary to slightly change the examples for your
    situation, e.g. adding the <code>[PT]</code> flag when
    additionally using <module>mod_alias</module> and
    <module>mod_userdir</module>, etc. Or rewriting a ruleset
    to fit in <code>.htaccess</code> context instead
    of per-server context. Always try to understand what a
    particular ruleset really does before you use it. It
    avoid problems.</note>

  </section>

  <section id="url">

    <title>URL Layout</title>

    <section>

      <title>Canonical URLs</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>On some webservers there are more than one URL for a
          resource. Usually there are canonical URLs (which should be
          actually used and distributed) and those which are just
          shortcuts, internal ones, etc. Independent of which URL the
          user supplied with the request he should finally see the
          canonical one only.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We do an external HTTP redirect for all non-canonical
          URLs to fix them in the location view of the Browser and
          for all subsequent requests. In the example ruleset below
          we replace <code>/~user</code> by the canonical
          <code>/u/user</code> and fix a missing trailing slash for
          <code>/u/user</code>.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule   ^/<strong>~</strong>([^/]+)/?(.*)    /<strong>u</strong>/$1/$2  [<strong>R</strong>]
RewriteRule   ^/([uge])/(<strong>[^/]+</strong>)$  /$1/$2<strong>/</strong>   [<strong>R</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Canonical Hostnames</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>...</dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^fully\.qualified\.domain\.name [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^$
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^80$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)         http://fully.qualified.domain.name:%{SERVER_PORT}/$1 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^fully\.qualified\.domain\.name [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)         http://fully.qualified.domain.name/$1 [L,R]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Moved <code>DocumentRoot</code></title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Usually the <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>
          of the webserver directly relates to the URL "<code>/</code>".
          But often this data is not really of top-level priority, it is
          perhaps just one entity of a lot of data pools. For instance at
          our Intranet sites there are <code>/e/www/</code>
          (the homepage for WWW), <code>/e/sww/</code> (the homepage for
          the Intranet) etc. Now because the data of the <directive module="core"
          >DocumentRoot</directive> stays at <code>/e/www/</code> we had
          to make sure that all inlined images and other stuff inside this
          data pool work for subsequent requests.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We just redirect the URL <code>/</code> to
          <code>/e/www/</code>. While is seems trivial it is
          actually trivial with <module>mod_rewrite</module>, only.
          Because the typical old mechanisms of URL <em>Aliases</em>
          (as provides by <module>mod_alias</module> and friends)
          only used <em>prefix</em> matching. With this you cannot
          do such a redirection because the <directive module="core"
          >DocumentRoot</directive> is a prefix of all URLs. With
          <module>mod_rewrite</module> it is really trivial:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   <strong>^/$</strong>  /e/www/  [<strong>R</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Trailing Slash Problem</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Every webmaster can sing a song about the problem of
          the trailing slash on URLs referencing directories. If they
          are missing, the server dumps an error, because if you say
          <code>/~quux/foo</code> instead of <code>/~quux/foo/</code>
          then the server searches for a <em>file</em> named
          <code>foo</code>. And because this file is a directory it
          complains. Actually it tries to fix it itself in most of
          the cases, but sometimes this mechanism need to be emulated
          by you. For instance after you have done a lot of
          complicated URL rewritings to CGI scripts etc.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>The solution to this subtle problem is to let the server
          add the trailing slash automatically. To do this
          correctly we have to use an external redirect, so the
          browser correctly requests subsequent images etc. If we
          only did a internal rewrite, this would only work for the
          directory page, but would go wrong when any images are
          included into this page with relative URLs, because the
          browser would request an in-lined object. For instance, a
          request for <code>image.gif</code> in
          <code>/~quux/foo/index.html</code> would become
          <code>/~quux/image.gif</code> without the external
          redirect!</p>

          <p>So, to do this trick we write:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^foo<strong>$</strong>  foo<strong>/</strong>  [<strong>R</strong>]
</pre></example>

          <p>The crazy and lazy can even do the following in the
          top-level <code>.htaccess</code> file of their homedir.
          But notice that this creates some processing
          overhead.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteCond    %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  <strong>-d</strong>
RewriteRule    ^(.+<strong>[^/]</strong>)$           $1<strong>/</strong>  [R]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Webcluster through Homogeneous URL Layout</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We want to create a homogeneous and consistent URL
          layout over all WWW servers on a Intranet webcluster, i.e.
          all URLs (per definition server local and thus server
          dependent!) become actually server <em>independent</em>!
          What we want is to give the WWW namespace a consistent
          server-independent layout: no URL should have to include
          any physically correct target server. The cluster itself
          should drive us automatically to the physical target
          host.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>First, the knowledge of the target servers come from
          (distributed) external maps which contain information
          where our users, groups and entities stay. The have the
          form</p>

<example><pre>
user1  server_of_user1
user2  server_of_user2
:      :
</pre></example>

          <p>We put them into files <code>map.xxx-to-host</code>.
          Second we need to instruct all servers to redirect URLs
          of the forms</p>

<example><pre>
/u/user/anypath
/g/group/anypath
/e/entity/anypath
</pre></example>

          <p>to</p>

<example><pre>
http://physical-host/u/user/anypath
http://physical-host/g/group/anypath
http://physical-host/e/entity/anypath
</pre></example>

          <p>when the URL is not locally valid to a server. The
          following ruleset does this for us by the help of the map
          files (assuming that server0 is a default server which
          will be used if a user has no entry in the map):</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on

RewriteMap      user-to-host   txt:/path/to/map.user-to-host
RewriteMap     group-to-host   txt:/path/to/map.group-to-host
RewriteMap    entity-to-host   txt:/path/to/map.entity-to-host

RewriteRule   ^/u/<strong>([^/]+)</strong>/?(.*)   http://<strong>${user-to-host:$1|server0}</strong>/u/$1/$2
RewriteRule   ^/g/<strong>([^/]+)</strong>/?(.*)  http://<strong>${group-to-host:$1|server0}</strong>/g/$1/$2
RewriteRule   ^/e/<strong>([^/]+)</strong>/?(.*) http://<strong>${entity-to-host:$1|server0}</strong>/e/$1/$2

RewriteRule   ^/([uge])/([^/]+)/?$          /$1/$2/.www/
RewriteRule   ^/([uge])/([^/]+)/([^.]+.+)   /$1/$2/.www/$3\
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Move Homedirs to Different Webserver</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Many webmasters have asked for a solution to the
          following situation: They wanted to redirect just all
          homedirs on a webserver to another webserver. They usually
          need such things when establishing a newer webserver which
          will replace the old one over time.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>The solution is trivial with <module>mod_rewrite</module>.
          On the old webserver we just redirect all
          <code>/~user/anypath</code> URLs to
          <code>http://newserver/~user/anypath</code>.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   ^/~(.+)  http://<strong>newserver</strong>/~$1  [R,L]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Structured Homedirs</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Some sites with thousands of users usually use a
          structured homedir layout, i.e. each homedir is in a
          subdirectory which begins for instance with the first
          character of the username. So, <code>/~foo/anypath</code>
          is <code>/home/<strong>f</strong>/foo/.www/anypath</code>
          while <code>/~bar/anypath</code> is
          <code>/home/<strong>b</strong>/bar/.www/anypath</code>.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We use the following ruleset to expand the tilde URLs
          into exactly the above layout.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   ^/~(<strong>([a-z])</strong>[a-z0-9]+)(.*)  /home/<strong>$2</strong>/$1/.www$3
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Filesystem Reorganization</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>This really is a hardcore example: a killer application
          which heavily uses per-directory
          <code>RewriteRules</code> to get a smooth look and feel
          on the Web while its data structure is never touched or
          adjusted. Background: <strong><em>net.sw</em></strong> is
          my archive of freely available Unix software packages,
          which I started to collect in 1992. It is both my hobby
          and job to to this, because while I'm studying computer
          science I have also worked for many years as a system and
          network administrator in my spare time. Every week I need
          some sort of software so I created a deep hierarchy of
          directories where I stored the packages:</p>

<example><pre>
drwxrwxr-x   2 netsw  users    512 Aug  3 18:39 Audio/
drwxrwxr-x   2 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 14:37 Benchmark/
drwxrwxr-x  12 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 00:34 Crypto/
drwxrwxr-x   5 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 00:41 Database/
drwxrwxr-x   4 netsw  users    512 Jul 30 19:25 Dicts/
drwxrwxr-x  10 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 01:54 Graphic/
drwxrwxr-x   5 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 01:58 Hackers/
drwxrwxr-x   8 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 03:19 InfoSys/
drwxrwxr-x   3 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 03:21 Math/
drwxrwxr-x   3 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 03:24 Misc/
drwxrwxr-x   9 netsw  users    512 Aug  1 16:33 Network/
drwxrwxr-x   2 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 05:53 Office/
drwxrwxr-x   7 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 09:24 SoftEng/
drwxrwxr-x   7 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 12:17 System/
drwxrwxr-x  12 netsw  users    512 Aug  3 20:15 Typesetting/
drwxrwxr-x  10 netsw  users    512 Jul  9 14:08 X11/
</pre></example>

          <p>In July 1996 I decided to make this archive public to
          the world via a nice Web interface. "Nice" means that I
          wanted to offer an interface where you can browse
          directly through the archive hierarchy. And "nice" means
          that I didn't wanted to change anything inside this
          hierarchy - not even by putting some CGI scripts at the
          top of it. Why? Because the above structure should be
          later accessible via FTP as well, and I didn't want any
          Web or CGI stuff to be there.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>The solution has two parts: The first is a set of CGI
          scripts which create all the pages at all directory
          levels on-the-fly. I put them under
          <code>/e/netsw/.www/</code> as follows:</p>

<example><pre>
-rw-r--r--   1 netsw  users    1318 Aug  1 18:10 .wwwacl
drwxr-xr-x  18 netsw  users     512 Aug  5 15:51 DATA/
-rw-rw-rw-   1 netsw  users  372982 Aug  5 16:35 LOGFILE
-rw-r--r--   1 netsw  users     659 Aug  4 09:27 TODO
-rw-r--r--   1 netsw  users    5697 Aug  1 18:01 netsw-about.html
-rwxr-xr-x   1 netsw  users     579 Aug  2 10:33 netsw-access.pl
-rwxr-xr-x   1 netsw  users    1532 Aug  1 17:35 netsw-changes.cgi
-rwxr-xr-x   1 netsw  users    2866 Aug  5 14:49 netsw-home.cgi
drwxr-xr-x   2 netsw  users     512 Jul  8 23:47 netsw-img/
-rwxr-xr-x   1 netsw  users   24050 Aug  5 15:49 netsw-lsdir.cgi
-rwxr-xr-x   1 netsw  users    1589 Aug  3 18:43 netsw-search.cgi
-rwxr-xr-x   1 netsw  users    1885 Aug  1 17:41 netsw-tree.cgi
-rw-r--r--   1 netsw  users     234 Jul 30 16:35 netsw-unlimit.lst
</pre></example>

          <p>The <code>DATA/</code> subdirectory holds the above
          directory structure, i.e. the real
          <strong><em>net.sw</em></strong> stuff and gets
          automatically updated via <code>rdist</code> from time to
          time. The second part of the problem remains: how to link
          these two structures together into one smooth-looking URL
          tree? We want to hide the <code>DATA/</code> directory
          from the user while running the appropriate CGI scripts
          for the various URLs. Here is the solution: first I put
          the following into the per-directory configuration file
          in the <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>
          of the server to rewrite the announced URL
          <code>/net.sw/</code> to the internal path
          <code>/e/netsw</code>:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule  ^net.sw$       net.sw/        [R]
RewriteRule  ^net.sw/(.*)$  e/netsw/$1
</pre></example>

          <p>The first rule is for requests which miss the trailing
          slash! The second rule does the real thing. And then
          comes the killer configuration which stays in the
          per-directory config file
          <code>/e/netsw/.www/.wwwacl</code>:</p>

<example><pre>
Options       ExecCGI FollowSymLinks Includes MultiViews

RewriteEngine on

#  we are reached via /net.sw/ prefix
RewriteBase   /net.sw/

#  first we rewrite the root dir to
#  the handling cgi script
RewriteRule   ^$                       netsw-home.cgi     [L]
RewriteRule   ^index\.html$            netsw-home.cgi     [L]

#  strip out the subdirs when
#  the browser requests us from perdir pages
RewriteRule   ^.+/(netsw-[^/]+/.+)$    $1                 [L]

#  and now break the rewriting for local files
RewriteRule   ^netsw-home\.cgi.*       -                  [L]
RewriteRule   ^netsw-changes\.cgi.*    -                  [L]
RewriteRule   ^netsw-search\.cgi.*     -                  [L]
RewriteRule   ^netsw-tree\.cgi$        -                  [L]
RewriteRule   ^netsw-about\.html$      -                  [L]
RewriteRule   ^netsw-img/.*$           -                  [L]

#  anything else is a subdir which gets handled
#  by another cgi script
RewriteRule   !^netsw-lsdir\.cgi.*     -                  [C]
RewriteRule   (.*)                     netsw-lsdir.cgi/$1
</pre></example>

          <p>Some hints for interpretation:</p>

          <ol>
            <li>Notice the <code>L</code> (last) flag and no
            substitution field ('<code>-</code>') in the forth part</li>

            <li>Notice the <code>!</code> (not) character and
            the <code>C</code> (chain) flag at the first rule
            in the last part</li>

            <li>Notice the catch-all pattern in the last rule</li>
          </ol>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>NCSA imagemap to Apache <code>mod_imap</code></title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>When switching from the NCSA webserver to the more
          modern Apache webserver a lot of people want a smooth
          transition. So they want pages which use their old NCSA
          <code>imagemap</code> program to work under Apache with the
          modern <module>mod_imap</module>. The problem is that there
          are a lot of hyperlinks around which reference the
          <code>imagemap</code> program via
          <code>/cgi-bin/imagemap/path/to/page.map</code>. Under
          Apache this has to read just
          <code>/path/to/page.map</code>.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We use a global rule to remove the prefix on-the-fly for
          all requests:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteRule    ^/cgi-bin/imagemap(.*)  $1  [PT]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Search pages in more than one directory</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Sometimes it is necessary to let the webserver search
          for pages in more than one directory. Here MultiViews or
          other techniques cannot help.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We program a explicit ruleset which searches for the
          files in the directories.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on

#   first try to find it in custom/...
#   ...and if found stop and be happy:
RewriteCond         /your/docroot/<strong>dir1</strong>/%{REQUEST_FILENAME}  -f
RewriteRule  ^(.+)  /your/docroot/<strong>dir1</strong>/$1  [L]

#   second try to find it in pub/...
#   ...and if found stop and be happy:
RewriteCond         /your/docroot/<strong>dir2</strong>/%{REQUEST_FILENAME}  -f
RewriteRule  ^(.+)  /your/docroot/<strong>dir2</strong>/$1  [L]

#   else go on for other Alias or ScriptAlias directives,
#   etc.
RewriteRule   ^(.+)  -  [PT]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Set Environment Variables According To URL Parts</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Perhaps you want to keep status information between
          requests and use the URL to encode it. But you don't want
          to use a CGI wrapper for all pages just to strip out this
          information.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We use a rewrite rule to strip out the status information
          and remember it via an environment variable which can be
          later dereferenced from within XSSI or CGI. This way a
          URL <code>/foo/S=java/bar/</code> gets translated to
          <code>/foo/bar/</code> and the environment variable named
          <code>STATUS</code> is set to the value "java".</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   ^(.*)/<strong>S=([^/]+)</strong>/(.*)    $1/$3 [E=<strong>STATUS:$2</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Virtual User Hosts</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Assume that you want to provide
          <code>www.<strong>username</strong>.host.domain.com</code>
          for the homepage of username via just DNS A records to the
          same machine and without any virtualhosts on this
          machine.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>For HTTP/1.0 requests there is no solution, but for
          HTTP/1.1 requests which contain a Host: HTTP header we
          can use the following ruleset to rewrite
          <code>http://www.username.host.com/anypath</code>
          internally to <code>/home/username/anypath</code>:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{<strong>HTTP_HOST</strong>}                 ^www\.<strong>[^.]+</strong>\.host\.com$
RewriteRule   ^(.+)                        %{HTTP_HOST}$1          [C]
RewriteRule   ^www\.<strong>([^.]+)</strong>\.host\.com(.*) /home/<strong>$1</strong>$2
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Redirect Homedirs For Foreigners</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We want to redirect homedir URLs to another webserver
          <code>www.somewhere.com</code> when the requesting user
          does not stay in the local domain
          <code>ourdomain.com</code>. This is sometimes used in
          virtual host contexts.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Just a rewrite condition:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{REMOTE_HOST}  <strong>!^.+\.ourdomain\.com$</strong>
RewriteRule   ^(/~.+)         http://www.somewhere.com/$1 [R,L]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Redirect Failing URLs To Other Webserver</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>A typical FAQ about URL rewriting is how to redirect
          failing requests on webserver A to webserver B. Usually
          this is done via <directive module="core"
          >ErrorDocument</directive> CGI-scripts in Perl, but
          there is also a <module>mod_rewrite</module> solution.
          But notice that this performs more poorly than using an
          <directive module="core">ErrorDocument</directive>
          CGI-script!</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>The first solution has the best performance but less
          flexibility, and is less error safe:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   /your/docroot/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} <strong>!-f</strong>
RewriteRule   ^(.+)                             http://<strong>webserverB</strong>.dom/$1
</pre></example>

          <p>The problem here is that this will only work for pages
          inside the <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>. While you can add more
          Conditions (for instance to also handle homedirs, etc.)
          there is better variant:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI} <strong>!-U</strong>
RewriteRule   ^(.+)          http://<strong>webserverB</strong>.dom/$1
</pre></example>

          <p>This uses the URL look-ahead feature of <module>mod_rewrite</module>.
          The result is that this will work for all types of URLs
          and is a safe way. But it does a performance impact on
          the webserver, because for every request there is one
          more internal subrequest. So, if your webserver runs on a
          powerful CPU, use this one. If it is a slow machine, use
          the first approach or better a <directive module="core"
          >ErrorDocument</directive> CGI-script.</p>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Extended Redirection</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Sometimes we need more control (concerning the
          character escaping mechanism) of URLs on redirects.
          Usually the Apache kernels URL escape function also
          escapes anchors, i.e. URLs like "<code>url#anchor</code>".
          You cannot use this directly on redirects with
          <module>mod_rewrite</module> because the
          <code>uri_escape()</code> function of Apache
          would also escape the hash character.
          How can we redirect to such a URL?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We have to use a kludge by the use of a NPH-CGI script
          which does the redirect itself. Because here no escaping
          is done (NPH=non-parseable headers). First we introduce a
          new URL scheme <code>xredirect:</code> by the following
          per-server config-line (should be one of the last rewrite
          rules):</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule ^xredirect:(.+) /path/to/nph-xredirect.cgi/$1 \
            [T=application/x-httpd-cgi,L]
</pre></example>

          <p>This forces all URLs prefixed with
          <code>xredirect:</code> to be piped through the
          <code>nph-xredirect.cgi</code> program. And this program
          just looks like:</p>

<example><pre>
#!/path/to/perl
##
##  nph-xredirect.cgi -- NPH/CGI script for extended redirects
##  Copyright (c) 1997 Ralf S. Engelschall, All Rights Reserved.
##

$| = 1;
$url = $ENV{'PATH_INFO'};

print "HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily\n";
print "Server: $ENV{'SERVER_SOFTWARE'}\n";
print "Location: $url\n";
print "Content-type: text/html\n";
print "\n";
print "&lt;html&gt;\n";
print "&lt;head&gt;\n";
print "&lt;title&gt;302 Moved Temporarily (EXTENDED)&lt;/title&gt;\n";
print "&lt;/head&gt;\n";
print "&lt;body&gt;\n";
print "&lt;h1&gt;Moved Temporarily (EXTENDED)&lt;/h1&gt;\n";
print "The document has moved &lt;a HREF=\"$url\"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;\n";
print "&lt;/body&gt;\n";
print "&lt;/html&gt;\n";

##EOF##
</pre></example>

          <p>This provides you with the functionality to do
          redirects to all URL schemes, i.e. including the one
          which are not directly accepted by <module>mod_rewrite</module>.
          For instance you can now also redirect to
          <code>news:newsgroup</code> via</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule ^anyurl  xredirect:news:newsgroup
</pre></example>

          <note>Notice: You have not to put <code>[R]</code> or
          <code>[R,L]</code> to the above rule because the
          <code>xredirect:</code> need to be expanded later
          by our special "pipe through" rule above.</note>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Archive Access Multiplexer</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Do you know the great CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive
          Network) under <a href="http://www.perl.com/CPAN"
          >http://www.perl.com/CPAN</a>?
          This does a redirect to one of several FTP servers around
          the world which carry a CPAN mirror and is approximately
          near the location of the requesting client. Actually this
          can be called an FTP access multiplexing service. While
          CPAN runs via CGI scripts, how can a similar approach
          implemented via <module>mod_rewrite</module>?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>First we notice that from version 3.0.0
          <module>mod_rewrite</module> can
          also use the "<code>ftp:</code>" scheme on redirects.
          And second, the location approximation can be done by a
          <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteMap</directive>
          over the top-level domain of the client.
          With a tricky chained ruleset we can use this top-level
          domain as a key to our multiplexing map.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap    multiplex                txt:/path/to/map.cxan
RewriteRule   ^/CxAN/(.*)              %{REMOTE_HOST}::$1                 [C]
RewriteRule   ^.+\.<strong>([a-zA-Z]+)</strong>::(.*)$  ${multiplex:<strong>$1</strong>|ftp.default.dom}$2  [R,L]
</pre></example>

<example><pre>
##
##  map.cxan -- Multiplexing Map for CxAN
##

de        ftp://ftp.cxan.de/CxAN/
uk        ftp://ftp.cxan.uk/CxAN/
com       ftp://ftp.cxan.com/CxAN/
 :
##EOF##
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Time-Dependent Rewriting</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>When tricks like time-dependent content should happen a
          lot of webmasters still use CGI scripts which do for
          instance redirects to specialized pages. How can it be done
          via <module>mod_rewrite</module>?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>There are a lot of variables named <code>TIME_xxx</code>
          for rewrite conditions. In conjunction with the special
          lexicographic comparison patterns <code>&lt;STRING</code>,
          <code>&gt;STRING</code> and <code>=STRING</code> we can
          do time-dependent redirects:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} &gt;0700
RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} &lt;1900
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.day.html
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.night.html
</pre></example>

          <p>This provides the content of <code>foo.day.html</code>
          under the URL <code>foo.html</code> from
          <code>07:00-19:00</code> and at the remaining time the
          contents of <code>foo.night.html</code>. Just a nice
          feature for a homepage...</p>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Backward Compatibility for YYYY to XXXX migration</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>How can we make URLs backward compatible (still
          existing virtually) after migrating <code>document.YYYY</code>
          to <code>document.XXXX</code>, e.g. after translating a
          bunch of <code>.html</code> files to <code>.phtml</code>?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We just rewrite the name to its basename and test for
          existence of the new extension. If it exists, we take
          that name, else we rewrite the URL to its original state.</p>


<example><pre>
#   backward compatibility ruleset for
#   rewriting document.html to document.phtml
#   when and only when document.phtml exists
#   but no longer document.html
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase   /~quux/
#   parse out basename, but remember the fact
RewriteRule   ^(.*)\.html$              $1      [C,E=WasHTML:yes]
#   rewrite to document.phtml if exists
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.phtml -f
RewriteRule   ^(.*)$ $1.phtml                   [S=1]
#   else reverse the previous basename cutout
RewriteCond   %{ENV:WasHTML}            ^yes$
RewriteRule   ^(.*)$ $1.html
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="content">

    <title>Content Handling</title>

    <section>

      <title>From Old to New (intern)</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Assume we have recently renamed the page
          <code>bar.html</code> to <code>foo.html</code> and now want
          to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. Actually
          we want that users of the old URL even not recognize that
          the pages was renamed.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We rewrite the old URL to the new one internally via the
          following rule:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^<strong>foo</strong>\.html$  <strong>bar</strong>.html
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>From Old to New (extern)</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Assume again that we have recently renamed the page
          <code>bar.html</code> to <code>foo.html</code> and now want
          to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. But this
          time we want that the users of the old URL get hinted to
          the new one, i.e. their browsers Location field should
          change, too.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We force a HTTP redirect to the new URL which leads to a
          change of the browsers and thus the users view:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^<strong>foo</strong>\.html$  <strong>bar</strong>.html  [<strong>R</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Browser Dependent Content</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>At least for important top-level pages it is sometimes
          necessary to provide the optimum of browser dependent
          content, i.e. one has to provide a maximum version for the
          latest Netscape variants, a minimum version for the Lynx
          browsers and a average feature version for all others.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We cannot use content negotiation because the browsers do
          not provide their type in that form. Instead we have to
          act on the HTTP header "User-Agent". The following condig
          does the following: If the HTTP header "User-Agent"
          begins with "Mozilla/3", the page <code>foo.html</code>
          is rewritten to <code>foo.NS.html</code> and and the
          rewriting stops. If the browser is "Lynx" or "Mozilla" of
          version 1 or 2 the URL becomes <code>foo.20.html</code>.
          All other browsers receive page <code>foo.32.html</code>.
          This is done by the following ruleset:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^<strong>Mozilla/3</strong>.*
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.<strong>NS</strong>.html          [<strong>L</strong>]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^<strong>Lynx/</strong>.*         [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^<strong>Mozilla/[12]</strong>.*
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.<strong>20</strong>.html          [<strong>L</strong>]

RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.<strong>32</strong>.html          [<strong>L</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Dynamic Mirror</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Assume there are nice webpages on remote hosts we want
          to bring into our namespace. For FTP servers we would use
          the <code>mirror</code> program which actually maintains an
          explicit up-to-date copy of the remote data on the local
          machine. For a webserver we could use the program
          <code>webcopy</code> which acts similar via HTTP. But both
          techniques have one major drawback: The local copy is
          always just as up-to-date as often we run the program. It
          would be much better if the mirror is not a static one we
          have to establish explicitly. Instead we want a dynamic
          mirror with data which gets updated automatically when
          there is need (updated data on the remote host).</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>To provide this feature we map the remote webpage or even
          the complete remote webarea to our namespace by the use
          of the <dfn>Proxy Throughput</dfn> feature
          (flag <code>[P]</code>):</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^<strong>hotsheet/</strong>(.*)$  <strong>http://www.tstimpreso.com/hotsheet/</strong>$1  [<strong>P</strong>]
</pre></example>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^<strong>usa-news\.html</strong>$   <strong>http://www.quux-corp.com/news/index.html</strong>  [<strong>P</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Reverse Dynamic Mirror</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>...</dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   /mirror/of/remotesite/$1           -U
RewriteRule   ^http://www\.remotesite\.com/(.*)$ /mirror/of/remotesite/$1
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Retrieve Missing Data from Intranet</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>This is a tricky way of virtually running a corporate
          (external) Internet webserver
          (<code>www.quux-corp.dom</code>), while actually keeping
          and maintaining its data on a (internal) Intranet webserver
          (<code>www2.quux-corp.dom</code>) which is protected by a
          firewall. The trick is that on the external webserver we
          retrieve the requested data on-the-fly from the internal
          one.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>First, we have to make sure that our firewall still
          protects the internal webserver and that only the
          external webserver is allowed to retrieve data from it.
          For a packet-filtering firewall we could for instance
          configure a firewall ruleset like the following:</p>

<example><pre>
<strong>ALLOW</strong> Host www.quux-corp.dom Port &gt;1024 --&gt; Host www2.quux-corp.dom Port <strong>80</strong>
<strong>DENY</strong>  Host *                 Port *     --&gt; Host www2.quux-corp.dom Port <strong>80</strong>
</pre></example>

          <p>Just adjust it to your actual configuration syntax.
          Now we can establish the <module>mod_rewrite</module>
          rules which request the missing data in the background
          through the proxy throughput feature:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule ^/~([^/]+)/?(.*)          /home/$1/.www/$2
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}       <strong>!-f</strong>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}       <strong>!-d</strong>
RewriteRule ^/home/([^/]+)/.www/?(.*) http://<strong>www2</strong>.quux-corp.dom/~$1/pub/$2 [<strong>P</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Load Balancing</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Suppose we want to load balance the traffic to
          <code>www.foo.com</code> over <code>www[0-5].foo.com</code>
          (a total of 6 servers). How can this be done?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>There are a lot of possible solutions for this problem.
          We will discuss first a commonly known DNS-based variant
          and then the special one with <module>mod_rewrite</module>:</p>

          <ol>
            <li>
              <strong>DNS Round-Robin</strong>

              <p>The simplest method for load-balancing is to use
              the DNS round-robin feature of <code>BIND</code>.
              Here you just configure <code>www[0-9].foo.com</code>
              as usual in your DNS with A(address) records, e.g.</p>

<example><pre>
www0   IN  A       1.2.3.1
www1   IN  A       1.2.3.2
www2   IN  A       1.2.3.3
www3   IN  A       1.2.3.4
www4   IN  A       1.2.3.5
www5   IN  A       1.2.3.6
</pre></example>

              <p>Then you additionally add the following entry:</p>

<example><pre>
www    IN  CNAME   www0.foo.com.
       IN  CNAME   www1.foo.com.
       IN  CNAME   www2.foo.com.
       IN  CNAME   www3.foo.com.
       IN  CNAME   www4.foo.com.
       IN  CNAME   www5.foo.com.
       IN  CNAME   www6.foo.com.
</pre></example>

              <p>Notice that this seems wrong, but is actually an
              intended feature of <code>BIND</code> and can be used
              in this way. However, now when <code>www.foo.com</code> gets
              resolved, <code>BIND</code> gives out <code>www0-www6</code>
              - but in a slightly permutated/rotated order every time.
              This way the clients are spread over the various
              servers. But notice that this not a perfect load
              balancing scheme, because DNS resolve information
              gets cached by the other nameservers on the net, so
              once a client has resolved <code>www.foo.com</code>
              to a particular <code>wwwN.foo.com</code>, all
              subsequent requests also go to this particular name
              <code>wwwN.foo.com</code>. But the final result is
              ok, because the total sum of the requests are really
              spread over the various webservers.</p>
            </li>

            <li>
              <strong>DNS Load-Balancing</strong>

              <p>A sophisticated DNS-based method for
              load-balancing is to use the program
              <code>lbnamed</code> which can be found at <a
              href="http://www.stanford.edu/~schemers/docs/lbnamed/lbnamed.html">
              http://www.stanford.edu/~schemers/docs/lbnamed/lbnamed.html</a>.
              It is a Perl 5 program in conjunction with auxilliary
              tools which provides a real load-balancing for
              DNS.</p>
            </li>

            <li>
              <strong>Proxy Throughput Round-Robin</strong>

              <p>In this variant we use <module>mod_rewrite</module>
              and its proxy throughput feature. First we dedicate
              <code>www0.foo.com</code> to be actually
              <code>www.foo.com</code> by using a single</p>

<example><pre>
www    IN  CNAME   www0.foo.com.
</pre></example>

              <p>entry in the DNS. Then we convert
              <code>www0.foo.com</code> to a proxy-only server,
              i.e. we configure this machine so all arriving URLs
              are just pushed through the internal proxy to one of
              the 5 other servers (<code>www1-www5</code>). To
              accomplish this we first establish a ruleset which
              contacts a load balancing script <code>lb.pl</code>
              for all URLs.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap    lb      prg:/path/to/lb.pl
RewriteRule   ^/(.+)$ ${lb:$1}           [P,L]
</pre></example>

              <p>Then we write <code>lb.pl</code>:</p>

<example><pre>
#!/path/to/perl
##
##  lb.pl -- load balancing script
##

$| = 1;

$name   = "www";     # the hostname base
$first  = 1;         # the first server (not 0 here, because 0 is myself)
$last   = 5;         # the last server in the round-robin
$domain = "foo.dom"; # the domainname

$cnt = 0;
while (&lt;STDIN&gt;) {
    $cnt = (($cnt+1) % ($last+1-$first));
    $server = sprintf("%s%d.%s", $name, $cnt+$first, $domain);
    print "http://$server/$_";
}

##EOF##
</pre></example>

              <note>A last notice: Why is this useful? Seems like
              <code>www0.foo.com</code> still is overloaded? The
              answer is yes, it is overloaded, but with plain proxy
              throughput requests, only! All SSI, CGI, ePerl, etc.
              processing is completely done on the other machines.
              This is the essential point.</note>
            </li>

            <li>
              <strong>Hardware/TCP Round-Robin</strong>

              <p>There is a hardware solution available, too. Cisco
              has a beast called LocalDirector which does a load
              balancing at the TCP/IP level. Actually this is some
              sort of a circuit level gateway in front of a
              webcluster. If you have enough money and really need
              a solution with high performance, use this one.</p>
            </li>
          </ol>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Reverse Proxy</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>...</dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
<example><pre>
##
##  apache-rproxy.conf -- Apache configuration for Reverse Proxy Usage
##

#   server type
ServerType           standalone
Listen               8000
MinSpareServers      16
StartServers         16
MaxSpareServers      16
MaxClients           16
MaxRequestsPerChild  100

#   server operation parameters
KeepAlive            on
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout     15
Timeout              400
IdentityCheck        off
HostnameLookups      off

#   paths to runtime files
PidFile              /path/to/apache-rproxy.pid
LockFile             /path/to/apache-rproxy.lock
ErrorLog             /path/to/apache-rproxy.elog
CustomLog            /path/to/apache-rproxy.dlog "%{%v/%T}t %h -&gt; %{SERVER}e URL: %U"

#   unused paths
ServerRoot           /tmp
DocumentRoot         /tmp
CacheRoot            /tmp
RewriteLog           /dev/null
TransferLog          /dev/null
TypesConfig          /dev/null
AccessConfig         /dev/null
ResourceConfig       /dev/null

#   speed up and secure processing
&lt;Directory /&gt;
Options -FollowSymLinks -SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
AllowOverride None
&lt;/Directory&gt;

#   the status page for monitoring the reverse proxy
&lt;Location /apache-rproxy-status&gt;
SetHandler server-status
&lt;/Location&gt;

#   enable the URL rewriting engine
RewriteEngine        on
RewriteLogLevel      0

#   define a rewriting map with value-lists where
#   mod_rewrite randomly chooses a particular value
RewriteMap     server  rnd:/path/to/apache-rproxy.conf-servers

#   make sure the status page is handled locally
#   and make sure no one uses our proxy except ourself
RewriteRule    ^/apache-rproxy-status.*  -  [L]
RewriteRule    ^(http|ftp)://.*          -  [F]

#   now choose the possible servers for particular URL types
RewriteRule    ^/(.*\.(cgi|shtml))$  to://${server:dynamic}/$1  [S=1]
RewriteRule    ^/(.*)$               to://${server:static}/$1

#   and delegate the generated URL by passing it
#   through the proxy module
RewriteRule    ^to://([^/]+)/(.*)    http://$1/$2   [E=SERVER:$1,P,L]

#   and make really sure all other stuff is forbidden
#   when it should survive the above rules...
RewriteRule    .*                    -              [F]

#   enable the Proxy module without caching
ProxyRequests        on
NoCache              *

#   setup URL reverse mapping for redirect reponses
ProxyPassReverse  /  http://www1.foo.dom/
ProxyPassReverse  /  http://www2.foo.dom/
ProxyPassReverse  /  http://www3.foo.dom/
ProxyPassReverse  /  http://www4.foo.dom/
ProxyPassReverse  /  http://www5.foo.dom/
ProxyPassReverse  /  http://www6.foo.dom/
</pre></example>

<example><pre>
##
##  apache-rproxy.conf-servers -- Apache/mod_rewrite selection table
##

#   list of backend servers which serve static
#   pages (HTML files and Images, etc.)
static    www1.foo.dom|www2.foo.dom|www3.foo.dom|www4.foo.dom

#   list of backend servers which serve dynamically
#   generated page (CGI programs or mod_perl scripts)
dynamic   www5.foo.dom|www6.foo.dom
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>New MIME-type, New Service</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>On the net there are a lot of nifty CGI programs. But
          their usage is usually boring, so a lot of webmaster
          don't use them. Even Apache's Action handler feature for
          MIME-types is only appropriate when the CGI programs
          don't need special URLs (actually <code>PATH_INFO</code>
          and <code>QUERY_STRINGS</code>) as their input. First,
          let us configure a new file type with extension
          <code>.scgi</code> (for secure CGI) which will be processed
          by the popular <code>cgiwrap</code> program. The problem
          here is that for instance we use a Homogeneous URL Layout
          (see above) a file inside the user homedirs has the URL
          <code>/u/user/foo/bar.scgi</code>. But
          <code>cgiwrap</code> needs the URL in the form
          <code>/~user/foo/bar.scgi/</code>. The following rule
          solves the problem:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule ^/[uge]/<strong>([^/]+)</strong>/\.www/(.+)\.scgi(.*) ...
... /internal/cgi/user/cgiwrap/~<strong>$1</strong>/$2.scgi$3  [NS,<strong>T=application/x-http-cgi</strong>]
</pre></example>

          <p>Or assume we have some more nifty programs:
          <code>wwwlog</code> (which displays the
          <code>access.log</code> for a URL subtree and
          <code>wwwidx</code> (which runs Glimpse on a URL
          subtree). We have to provide the URL area to these
          programs so they know on which area they have to act on.
          But usually this ugly, because they are all the times
          still requested from that areas, i.e. typically we would
          run the <code>swwidx</code> program from within
          <code>/u/user/foo/</code> via hyperlink to</p>

<example><pre>
/internal/cgi/user/swwidx?i=/u/user/foo/
</pre></example>

          <p>which is ugly. Because we have to hard-code
          <strong>both</strong> the location of the area
          <strong>and</strong> the location of the CGI inside the
          hyperlink. When we have to reorganize the area, we spend a
          lot of time changing the various hyperlinks.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>The solution here is to provide a special new URL format
          which automatically leads to the proper CGI invocation.
          We configure the following:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule   ^/([uge])/([^/]+)(/?.*)/\*  /internal/cgi/user/wwwidx?i=/$1/$2$3/
RewriteRule   ^/([uge])/([^/]+)(/?.*):log /internal/cgi/user/wwwlog?f=/$1/$2$3
</pre></example>

          <p>Now the hyperlink to search at
          <code>/u/user/foo/</code> reads only</p>

<example><pre>
HREF="*"
</pre></example>

          <p>which internally gets automatically transformed to</p>

<example><pre>
/internal/cgi/user/wwwidx?i=/u/user/foo/
</pre></example>

          <p>The same approach leads to an invocation for the
          access log CGI program when the hyperlink
          <code>:log</code> gets used.</p>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>From Static to Dynamic</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>How can we transform a static page
          <code>foo.html</code> into a dynamic variant
          <code>foo.cgi</code> in a seamless way, i.e. without notice
          by the browser/user.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We just rewrite the URL to the CGI-script and force the
          correct MIME-type so it gets really run as a CGI-script.
          This way a request to <code>/~quux/foo.html</code>
          internally leads to the invocation of
          <code>/~quux/foo.cgi</code>.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^foo\.<strong>html</strong>$  foo.<strong>cgi</strong>  [T=<strong>application/x-httpd-cgi</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>On-the-fly Content-Regeneration</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Here comes a really esoteric feature: Dynamically
          generated but statically served pages, i.e. pages should be
          delivered as pure static pages (read from the filesystem
          and just passed through), but they have to be generated
          dynamically by the webserver if missing. This way you can
          have CGI-generated pages which are statically served unless
          one (or a cronjob) removes the static contents. Then the
          contents gets refreshed.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          This is done via the following ruleset:

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}   <strong>!-s</strong>
RewriteRule ^page\.<strong>html</strong>$          page.<strong>cgi</strong>   [T=application/x-httpd-cgi,L]
</pre></example>

          <p>Here a request to <code>page.html</code> leads to a
          internal run of a corresponding <code>page.cgi</code> if
          <code>page.html</code> is still missing or has filesize
          null. The trick here is that <code>page.cgi</code> is a
          usual CGI script which (additionally to its <code>STDOUT</code>)
          writes its output to the file <code>page.html</code>.
          Once it was run, the server sends out the data of
          <code>page.html</code>. When the webmaster wants to force
          a refresh the contents, he just removes
          <code>page.html</code> (usually done by a cronjob).</p>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Document With Autorefresh</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Wouldn't it be nice while creating a complex webpage if
          the webbrowser would automatically refresh the page every
          time we write a new version from within our editor?
          Impossible?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>No! We just combine the MIME multipart feature, the
          webserver NPH feature and the URL manipulation power of
          <module>mod_rewrite</module>. First, we establish a new
          URL feature: Adding just <code>:refresh</code> to any
          URL causes this to be refreshed every time it gets
          updated on the filesystem.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteRule   ^(/[uge]/[^/]+/?.*):refresh  /internal/cgi/apache/nph-refresh?f=$1
</pre></example>

          <p>Now when we reference the URL</p>

<example><pre>
/u/foo/bar/page.html:refresh
</pre></example>

          <p>this leads to the internal invocation of the URL</p>

<example><pre>
/internal/cgi/apache/nph-refresh?f=/u/foo/bar/page.html
</pre></example>

          <p>The only missing part is the NPH-CGI script. Although
          one would usually say "left as an exercise to the reader"
          ;-) I will provide this, too.</p>

<example><pre>
#!/sw/bin/perl
##
##  nph-refresh -- NPH/CGI script for auto refreshing pages
##  Copyright (c) 1997 Ralf S. Engelschall, All Rights Reserved.
##
$| = 1;

#   split the QUERY_STRING variable
@pairs = split(/&amp;/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
foreach $pair (@pairs) {
    ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
    $name =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
    $name = 'QS_' . $name;
    $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
    eval "\$$name = \"$value\"";
}
$QS_s = 1 if ($QS_s eq '');
$QS_n = 3600 if ($QS_n eq '');
if ($QS_f eq '') {
    print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "&amp;lt;b&amp;gt;ERROR&amp;lt;/b&amp;gt;: No file given\n";
    exit(0);
}
if (! -f $QS_f) {
    print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "&amp;lt;b&amp;gt;ERROR&amp;lt;/b&amp;gt;: File $QS_f not found\n";
    exit(0);
}

sub print_http_headers_multipart_begin {
    print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
    $bound = "ThisRandomString12345";
    print "Content-type: multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary=$bound\n";
    &amp;print_http_headers_multipart_next;
}

sub print_http_headers_multipart_next {
    print "\n--$bound\n";
}

sub print_http_headers_multipart_end {
    print "\n--$bound--\n";
}

sub displayhtml {
    local($buffer) = @_;
    $len = length($buffer);
    print "Content-type: text/html\n";
    print "Content-length: $len\n\n";
    print $buffer;
}

sub readfile {
    local($file) = @_;
    local(*FP, $size, $buffer, $bytes);
    ($x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $size) = stat($file);
    $size = sprintf("%d", $size);
    open(FP, "&amp;lt;$file");
    $bytes = sysread(FP, $buffer, $size);
    close(FP);
    return $buffer;
}

$buffer = &amp;readfile($QS_f);
&amp;print_http_headers_multipart_begin;
&amp;displayhtml($buffer);

sub mystat {
    local($file) = $_[0];
    local($time);

    ($x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $mtime) = stat($file);
    return $mtime;
}

$mtimeL = &amp;mystat($QS_f);
$mtime = $mtime;
for ($n = 0; $n &amp;lt; $QS_n; $n++) {
    while (1) {
        $mtime = &amp;mystat($QS_f);
        if ($mtime ne $mtimeL) {
            $mtimeL = $mtime;
            sleep(2);
            $buffer = &amp;readfile($QS_f);
            &amp;print_http_headers_multipart_next;
            &amp;displayhtml($buffer);
            sleep(5);
            $mtimeL = &amp;mystat($QS_f);
            last;
        }
        sleep($QS_s);
    }
}

&amp;print_http_headers_multipart_end;

exit(0);

##EOF##
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Mass Virtual Hosting</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>The <directive type="section" module="core"
          >VirtualHost</directive> feature of Apache is nice
          and works great when you just have a few dozens
          virtual hosts. But when you are an ISP and have hundreds of
          virtual hosts to provide this feature is not the best
          choice.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>To provide this feature we map the remote webpage or even
          the complete remote webarea to our namespace by the use
          of the <dfn>Proxy Throughput</dfn> feature (flag <code>[P]</code>):</p>

<example><pre>
##
##  vhost.map
##
www.vhost1.dom:80  /path/to/docroot/vhost1
www.vhost2.dom:80  /path/to/docroot/vhost2
     :
www.vhostN.dom:80  /path/to/docroot/vhostN
</pre></example>

<example><pre>
##
##  httpd.conf
##
    :
#   use the canonical hostname on redirects, etc.
UseCanonicalName on

    :
#   add the virtual host in front of the CLF-format
CustomLog  /path/to/access_log  "%{VHOST}e %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %&gt;s %b"
    :

#   enable the rewriting engine in the main server
RewriteEngine on

#   define two maps: one for fixing the URL and one which defines
#   the available virtual hosts with their corresponding
#   DocumentRoot.
RewriteMap    lowercase    int:tolower
RewriteMap    vhost        txt:/path/to/vhost.map

#   Now do the actual virtual host mapping
#   via a huge and complicated single rule:
#
#   1. make sure we don't map for common locations
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URL}  !^/commonurl1/.*
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URL}  !^/commonurl2/.*
    :
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URL}  !^/commonurlN/.*
#
#   2. make sure we have a Host header, because
#      currently our approach only supports
#      virtual hosting through this header
RewriteCond   %{HTTP_HOST}  !^$
#
#   3. lowercase the hostname
RewriteCond   ${lowercase:%{HTTP_HOST}|NONE}  ^(.+)$
#
#   4. lookup this hostname in vhost.map and
#      remember it only when it is a path
#      (and not "NONE" from above)
RewriteCond   ${vhost:%1}  ^(/.*)$
#
#   5. finally we can map the URL to its docroot location
#      and remember the virtual host for logging puposes
RewriteRule   ^/(.*)$   %1/$1  [E=VHOST:${lowercase:%{HTTP_HOST}}]
    :
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="access">

    <title>Access Restriction</title>

    <section>

      <title>Blocking of Robots</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>How can we block a really annoying robot from
          retrieving pages of a specific webarea? A
          <code>/robots.txt</code> file containing entries of the
          "Robot Exclusion Protocol" is typically not enough to get
          rid of such a robot.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We use a ruleset which forbids the URLs of the webarea
          <code>/~quux/foo/arc/</code> (perhaps a very deep
          directory indexed area where the robot traversal would
          create big server load). We have to make sure that we
          forbid access only to the particular robot, i.e. just
          forbidding the host where the robot runs is not enough.
          This would block users from this host, too. We accomplish
          this by also matching the User-Agent HTTP header
          information.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}   ^<strong>NameOfBadRobot</strong>.*
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}       ^<strong>123\.45\.67\.[8-9]</strong>$
RewriteRule ^<strong>/~quux/foo/arc/</strong>.+   -   [<strong>F</strong>]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Blocked Inline-Images</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Assume we have under <code>http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/</code>
          some pages with inlined GIF graphics. These graphics are
          nice, so others directly incorporate them via hyperlinks to
          their pages. We don't like this practice because it adds
          useless traffic to our server.</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>While we cannot 100% protect the images from inclusion,
          we can at least restrict the cases where the browser
          sends a HTTP Referer header.</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} <strong>!^$</strong>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule <strong>.*\.gif$</strong>        -                                    [F]
</pre></example>

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}         !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}         !.*/foo-with-gif\.html$
RewriteRule <strong>^inlined-in-foo\.gif$</strong>   -                        [F]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Host Deny</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>How can we forbid a list of externally configured hosts
          from using our server?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>For Apache &gt;= 1.3b6:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap    hosts-deny  txt:/path/to/hosts.deny
RewriteCond   ${hosts-deny:%{REMOTE_HOST}|NOT-FOUND} !=NOT-FOUND [OR]
RewriteCond   ${hosts-deny:%{REMOTE_ADDR}|NOT-FOUND} !=NOT-FOUND
RewriteRule   ^/.*  -  [F]
</pre></example>

          <p>For Apache &lt;= 1.3b6:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap    hosts-deny  txt:/path/to/hosts.deny
RewriteRule   ^/(.*)$ ${hosts-deny:%{REMOTE_HOST}|NOT-FOUND}/$1
RewriteRule   !^NOT-FOUND/.* - [F]
RewriteRule   ^NOT-FOUND/(.*)$ ${hosts-deny:%{REMOTE_ADDR}|NOT-FOUND}/$1
RewriteRule   !^NOT-FOUND/.* - [F]
RewriteRule   ^NOT-FOUND/(.*)$ /$1
</pre></example>

<example><pre>
##
##  hosts.deny
##
##  ATTENTION! This is a map, not a list, even when we treat it as such.
##             mod_rewrite parses it for key/value pairs, so at least a
##             dummy value "-" must be present for each entry.
##

193.102.180.41 -
bsdti1.sdm.de  -
192.76.162.40  -
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Proxy Deny</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>How can we forbid a certain host or even a user of a
          special host from using the Apache proxy?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We first have to make sure <module>mod_rewrite</module>
          is below(!) <module>mod_proxy</module> in the Configuration
          file when compiling the Apache webserver. This way it gets
          called <em>before</em> <module>mod_proxy</module>. Then we
          configure the following for a host-dependent deny...</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} <strong>^badhost\.mydomain\.com$</strong>
RewriteRule !^http://[^/.]\.mydomain.com.*  - [F]
</pre></example>

          <p>...and this one for a user@host-dependent deny:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_IDENT}@%{REMOTE_HOST}  <strong>^badguy@badhost\.mydomain\.com$</strong>
RewriteRule !^http://[^/.]\.mydomain.com.*  - [F]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Special Authentication Variant</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Sometimes a very special authentication is needed, for
          instance a authentication which checks for a set of
          explicitly configured users. Only these should receive
          access and without explicit prompting (which would occur
          when using the Basic Auth via <module>mod_auth</module>).</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>We use a list of rewrite conditions to exclude all except
          our friends:</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_IDENT}@%{REMOTE_HOST} <strong>!^friend1@client1.quux-corp\.com$</strong>
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_IDENT}@%{REMOTE_HOST} <strong>!^friend2</strong>@client2.quux-corp\.com$
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_IDENT}@%{REMOTE_HOST} <strong>!^friend3</strong>@client3.quux-corp\.com$
RewriteRule ^/~quux/only-for-friends/      -                                 [F]
</pre></example>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

    <section>

      <title>Referer-based Deflector</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>How can we program a flexible URL Deflector which acts
          on the "Referer" HTTP header and can be configured with as
          many referring pages as we like?</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Use the following really tricky ruleset...</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteMap  deflector txt:/path/to/deflector.map

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=""
RewriteCond ${deflector:%{HTTP_REFERER}} ^-$
RewriteRule ^.* %{HTTP_REFERER} [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=""
RewriteCond ${deflector:%{HTTP_REFERER}|NOT-FOUND} !=NOT-FOUND
RewriteRule ^.* ${deflector:%{HTTP_REFERER}} [R,L]
</pre></example>

          <p>... in conjunction with a corresponding rewrite
          map:</p>

<example><pre>
##
##  deflector.map
##

http://www.badguys.com/bad/index.html    -
http://www.badguys.com/bad/index2.html   -
http://www.badguys.com/bad/index3.html   http://somewhere.com/
</pre></example>

          <p>This automatically redirects the request back to the
          referring page (when "<code>-</code>" is used as the value
          in the map) or to a specific URL (when an URL is specified
          in the map as the second argument).</p>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="other">

    <title>Other</title>

    <section>

      <title>External Rewriting Engine</title>

      <dl>
        <dt>Description:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>A FAQ: How can we solve the FOO/BAR/QUUX/etc.
          problem? There seems no solution by the use of
          <module>mod_rewrite</module>...</p>
        </dd>

        <dt>Solution:</dt>

        <dd>
          <p>Use an external <directive module="mod_rewrite"
          >RewriteMap</directive>, i.e. a program which acts
          like a <directive module="mod_rewrite"
          >RewriteMap</directive>. It is run once on startup of Apache
          receives the requested URLs on <code>STDIN</code> and has
          to put the resulting (usually rewritten) URL on
          <code>STDOUT</code> (same order!).</p>

<example><pre>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap    quux-map       <strong>prg:</strong>/path/to/map.quux.pl
RewriteRule   ^/~quux/(.*)$  /~quux/<strong>${quux-map:$1}</strong>
</pre></example>

<example><pre>
#!/path/to/perl

#   disable buffered I/O which would lead
#   to deadloops for the Apache server
$| = 1;

#   read URLs one per line from stdin and
#   generate substitution URL on stdout
while (&lt;&gt;) {
    s|^foo/|bar/|;
    print $_;
}
</pre></example>

          <p>This is a demonstration-only example and just rewrites
          all URLs <code>/~quux/foo/...</code> to
          <code>/~quux/bar/...</code>. Actually you can program
          whatever you like. But notice that while such maps can be
          <strong>used</strong> also by an average user, only the
          system administrator can <strong>define</strong> it.</p>
        </dd>
      </dl>

    </section>

  </section>

</manualpage>

