Htaccess file

Htaccess stands for Hypertext Access. It is a configuration file. This file is very handy when a user doesn't have access to the server configuration file. Users are allowed to change the name from .htaccess to something else.

Repository about apache

Change or view access file name

file configurations are located here /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.

//...
# AccessFileName: The name of the file to look for in each directory
# for additional configuration directives.  See also the AllowOverride
# directive.
#
AccessFileName .htaccess

#
# The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being
# viewed by Web clients.
#
<FilesMatch "^\.ht">
        Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
//...

How to enable

It is possible that rewrite rule is not enabled by default.

1. Enable Apache mod_rewrite module

sudo a2enmod rewrite

2. Enable overwrite in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. Find <Directory /var/www/> //...Some content</Directory> and set AllowOverride All

//...
<Directory /var/www/>
//...
AllowOverride All
//...
</Directory>
//...

Now restart

How to use

You can use one .htaccess file inside a folder and fortunately, there is no limit. Using multiple .htaccess files in a project is so handy.

• Create a .htaccess file
• Enable the rewrite engine by writing RewriteEngine On

Comment

Comments are started with #
Example: # This is a comment

RewriteCond

RewriteCond allows executing an action with a condition. It is similar to if in a programming language.
Example: We want to redirect user to a specific page if requested url is not a file and also not a folder

# Turn on rewrite engine
RewriteEngine On
# Is a file?
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# Is a folder
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# Condition matched
# Redirect to index.php then it will do something with this request
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php

RewiteRule

RewriteRule is used to rewrite requests.

//...
# Redirect to index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php

Common use cases

• Block directory listing
• Redirect users to another location
• Force HTTPS
• And more...

Example

Redirect any URL to a specific file. In this case, I’m redirecting to index.php. Here, we cannot access a file or folder since we don't use any conditions.

RewriteEngine On
# Redirect all request to index.php file
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php

Note: When we use a .htaccess file in the project root folder to redirect all requests to a specific file (e.g. api.php), and there is no condition. Unfortunately at some point we figure out that, we have a folder called public and users need to access it for files eg: image.img, we can do that by just creating a empty .htaccess file with RewriteEngine On. This file will overwrite all of the previous conditions. Horray, now users can access the public folder https://www.example.com/public.