URL Rewrites

Module: mod_rewrite

Table of Contents

• Description
• Options
• Regular Expressions
  • Replacement Patterns
• Examples
  • With mod_redirect
  • Workaround for "File name too long" on Windows

Description

internal redirects, url rewrite

Options

url.rewrite-once

rewrites a set of URLs internally in the webserver BEFORE they are handled.

e.g.

url.rewrite-once = ( "<regex>" => "<relative-uri>" )

url.rewrite-repeat

rewrites a set of URLs internally in the webserver BEFORE they are handled

e.g.

url.rewrite-repeat = ( "<regex>" => "<relative-uri>" )

The difference between these options is that, while url.rewrite-repeat allows for applying multiple (seperately defined) rewrite rules in a row, url.rewrite-once will cause further rewrite rules to be skipped if the expression was matched. As such, url.rewrite-once behaves like Apaches' RewriteRule ... [L]: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule

The options url.rewrite and url.rewrite-final were mapped to url.rewrite-once in 1.3.16.

NOTE: url rewriting does not work within a $HTTP["url"] conditional. [http://forum.lighttpd.net/topic/1092#3028]

Regular Expressions

• Patterns ("wildcards") are matched against a string
• Special characters:

• . (full stop) - match any character
• * (asterisk) - match zero or more of the previous symbol
• + (plus) - match one or more of the previous symbol
• ? (question) - match zero or one of the previous symbol
• \? (backslash-something) - match special characters
• ^ (caret) - match the start of a string
• $ (dollar) - match the end of a string
• [set] - match any one of the symbols inside the square braces.
• (pattern) - grouping, remember what the pattern matched as a special variable
• {n,m} - from n to m times matching the previous character (m could be ommited to mean >=n times)

• Normal alphanumeric characters are treated as normal

Replacement Patterns

If the matched regex contains groups in parentheses, $1..$9 in the replacement refer to the captured text in the matching group "$1" meaning the first group, "$2" the second, and so on.

You can also use certain meta-patterns in replacement text (NOTE: these inferred from examples in other modules, but unverified yet.):

• %% => % sign
• %0 => domain name + tld (Top Level Domain, like .com or .net)
• %1 => tld
• %2 => domain name without tld
• %3 => subdomain 1 name
• %4 => subdomain 2 name

Examples

The regex is matching the full REQUEST_URI which is supplied by the user including query-string.:

url.rewrite-once = ( "^/id/([0-9]+)$" => "/index.php?id=$1",
                     "^/link/([a-zA-Z]+)" => "/index.php?link=$1" )



# the following example, is, however just simulating vhost by rewrite
# * you can never change document-root by mod_rewrite
# use mod_*host instead to make real mass-vhost

# request:        http://any.domain.com/url/
# before rewrite: REQUEST_URI="/www/htdocs/url/"
# and DOCUMENT_ROOT="/www/htdocs/" %0="any.domain.com" $1="url/"
# after rewrite:  REQUEST_URI="/www/htdocs/any.domain.com/url/"
# still, you have DOCUMENT_ROOT=/www/htdocs/

server.document-root = "/www/htdocs/"
$HTTP["host"] =~ "^.*\.([^.]+\.com)$" {
  url.rewrite-once = ( "^/(.*)" => "/%0/$1" )
}

# please note, that we have two regular expressions: the one which
# $HTTP["host"] is been compared with, and the one of the rewrite rule.
# the numbered subexpressions available to build the relative uri are
# being prefixed by '%' for subexpressions of the first regular expression
# match and by '$' for subexpressions of the second one.
# in the case, when the rewrite rule is not included in a conditional
# block, only the '$' prefixed variables are available.
# subexpression 0 is the whole matching expression.

With mod_redirect

Rewrite rules always execute before redirect rules. This is true regardless of the order of module loading or the order of rules in the configuration (lighttpd v1.4.13). However, mod_rewrite provides a mechanism to pass URLs through unmangled: specify "$0" as the rule target.

e.g.

url.rewrite-once = (
    "^/foo"  => "$0",
    "^/(.*)" => "/handler/$1"
)

url.redirect = (
    "^/foo"  => "http://foo.bar/"
)

Workaround for "File name too long" on Windows

While running Lighttpd on Windows you may get 500 Internal Server Error if computed filename is longer than 255 symbols. In error log it will be (response.c.537) file not found ... or so:  File name too long /very_looooong_path ->. As workaround you can use mod_rewrite to avoid this error.

server.modules += ("mod_rewrite")
url.rewrite-once = ( ".{250,}" => "/toolong.php" )

If error handler is PHP, $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] will contain full URI.