dot (.) in regex changes return of RewriteRule?

Question

My goal is to redirect from domain.com/app/public/index.php?route=news/test/action to domain.com/news/test/action.

I used the following regex:

RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-/]*)$ app/public/index.php?route=$1 [NC]

This works when I call domain.com/news/test.

Now I want to also consider files to be routed so I include dots (.) in the regex like this:

RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-/.]*)$ app/public/index.php?route=$1 [NC]

Now when I call domain.com/news/test the output of $1 is not news/test but app/public/index.php.

What happened?

Sorry, but you must have confused something in your test. `app/public/index.php` is _not_ part of the request string you _claim_ you used. It is impossible that it is captured. So most likely you ran into a rewriting loop. — arkascha, Apr 19 '17 at 08:20
I never heard of a rewriting loop. Is it possible that the rule rewrites itself? — Dollique, Apr 19 '17 at 08:28
A rule (obviously) can not "rewrite itself". But a simple google search for a "rewrite loop" would have helped you: the rewrite engine is started again after your rule matches and now the rule is applied a _second_ time to the _new_ url resulting from the first rewrite. — arkascha, Apr 19 '17 at 08:43
Look up the `L` flag in the [mod_rewrite docs](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/flags.html#flag_l) - basically it means "after this rule has been applied, don't apply any more". — daiscog, Apr 19 '17 at 09:02
@megaflop this is not exactly true like I found out here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/13446636/1402958 — Dollique, Apr 19 '17 at 09:13

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 19 '17 at 08:20

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you used /. which means / or any symbol . If you want to use dot, use \.

answered Apr 19 '17 at 08:20

diavolic

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I tried `RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-/\.]*)$ app/public/index.php?route=$1 [NC]` but get the same result. – Dollique Apr 19 '17 at 08:23
I'm pretty sure `.` just means `.` when inside a character class (`[.]`). It would be pretty pointless for it to retain the "any character" meaning. – IMSoP Apr 19 '17 at 09:08

Dollique · Answer 2 · 2017-04-19T09:36:42.730

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Thanks to @arkascha I found the answer is a rewrite loop.

This code solved the problem:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-/\.]*)$ app/public/index.php?route=$1 [NC]

Thanks!

EDIT: My solution seems to have a problem with existing files like CSS files. It also redirects those. I will update as soon as I have a better way doing this...

edited Apr 19 '17 at 09:36

answered Apr 19 '17 at 08:55

Dollique

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dot (.) in regex changes return of RewriteRule?

2 Answers2