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<p class="menu"><a href="../mod/">Modules</a> | <a href="../mod/directives.html">Directives</a> | <a href="http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/FAQ">FAQ</a> | <a href="../glossary.html">Glossary</a> | <a href="../sitemap.html">Sitemap</a></p>
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<a href="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</a> > <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/">HTTP Server</a> > <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/">Documentation</a> > <a href="../">Version 2.5</a> > <a href="./">Rewrite</a></div><div id="page-content"><div id="preamble"><h1>Apache mod_rewrite Technical Details</h1>
<div class="toplang">
<p><span>Available Languages: </span><a href="../en/rewrite/tech.html" title="English"> en </a> |
<a href="../fr/rewrite/tech.html" hreflang="fr" rel="alternate" title="Français"> fr </a></p>
</div>
<p>This document discusses some of the technical details of mod_rewrite
and URL matching.</p>
</div>
<div id="quickview"><ul id="toc"><li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#InternalAPI">API Phases</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#InternalRuleset">Ruleset Processing</a></li>
</ul><h3>See also</h3><ul class="seealso"><li><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">Module documentation</a></li><li><a href="intro.html">mod_rewrite introduction</a></li><li><a href="remapping.html">Redirection and remapping</a></li><li><a href="access.html">Controlling access</a></li><li><a href="vhosts.html">Virtual hosts</a></li><li><a href="proxy.html">Proxying</a></li><li><a href="rewritemap.html">Using RewriteMap</a></li><li><a href="advanced.html">Advanced techniques</a></li><li><a href="avoid.html">When not to use mod_rewrite</a></li></ul><ul class="seealso"><li><a href="#comments_section">Comments</a></li></ul></div>
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<div class="section">
<h2><a name="InternalAPI" id="InternalAPI">API Phases</a></h2>
<p>The Apache HTTP Server handles requests in several phases. At
each of these phases, one or more modules may be called upon to
handle that portion of the request lifecycle. Phases include things
like URL-to-filename translation, authentication, authorization,
content, and logging. (This is not an exhaustive list.)</p>
<p>mod_rewrite acts in two of these phases (or "hooks", as they are
often called) to influence how URLs may be rewritten.</p>
<p>First, it uses the URL-to-filename translation hook, which occurs
after the HTTP request has been read, but before any authorization
starts. Secondly, it uses the Fixup hook, which is after the
authorization phases, and after per-directory configuration files
(<code>.htaccess</code> files) have been read, but before the
content handler is called.</p>
<p>So, after a request comes in and a corresponding server or
virtual host has been determined, the rewriting engine starts
processing any <code>mod_rewrite</code> directives appearing in the
per-server configuration. (i.e., in the main server configuration file
and <code class="directive"><a href="../mod/core.html#virtualhost"><Virtualhost></a></code>
sections.) This happens in the URL-to-filename phase.</p>
<p>A few steps later, once the final data directories have been found,
the per-directory configuration directives (<code>.htaccess</code>
files and <code class="directive"><a href="../mod/core.html#directory"><Directory></a></code> blocks) are applied. This
happens in the Fixup phase.</p>
<p>In each of these cases, mod_rewrite rewrites the
<code>REQUEST_URI</code> either to a new URL, or to a filename.</p>
<p>In per-directory context (i.e., within <code>.htaccess</code> files
and <code>Directory</code> blocks), these rules are being applied
after a URL has already been translated to a filename. Because of
this, the URL-path that mod_rewrite initially compares <code class="directive"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule">RewriteRule</a></code> directives against
is the full filesystem path to the translated filename with the current
directories path (including a trailing slash) removed from the front.</p>
<p> To illustrate: If rules are in /var/www/foo/.htaccess and a request
for /foo/bar/baz is being processed, an expression like ^bar/baz$ would
match.</p>
<p> If a substitution is made in per-directory context, a new internal
subrequest is issued with the new URL, which restarts processing of the
request phases. If the substitution is a relative path, the <code class="directive"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritebase">RewriteBase</a></code> directive
determines the URL-path prefix prepended to the substitution.
In per-directory context, care must be taken to
create rules which will eventually (in some future "round" of per-directory
rewrite processing) not perform a substitution to avoid looping.
(See <a href="http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/RewriteLooping">RewriteLooping</a>
for further discussion of this problem.)</p>
<p>Because of this further manipulation of the URL in per-directory
context, you'll need to take care to craft your rewrite rules
differently in that context. In particular, remember that the
leading directory path will be stripped off of the URL that your
rewrite rules will see. Consider the examples below for further
clarification.</p>
<table class="bordered">
<tr>
<th>Location of rule</th>
<th>Rule</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>VirtualHost section</td>
<td>RewriteRule ^/images/(.+)\.jpg /images/$1.gif</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>.htaccess file in document root</td>
<td>RewriteRule ^images/(.+)\.jpg images/$1.gif</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>.htaccess file in images directory</td>
<td>RewriteRule ^(.+)\.jpg $1.gif</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>For even more insight into how mod_rewrite manipulates URLs in
different contexts, you should consult the <a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html#logging">log entries</a> made during
rewriting.</p>
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<div class="section">
<h2><a name="InternalRuleset" id="InternalRuleset">Ruleset Processing</a></h2>
<p>Now when mod_rewrite is triggered in these two API phases, it
reads the configured rulesets from its configuration
structure (which itself was either created on startup for
per-server context or during the directory walk of the Apache
kernel for per-directory context). Then the URL rewriting
engine is started with the contained ruleset (one or more
rules together with their conditions). The operation of the
URL rewriting engine itself is exactly the same for both
configuration contexts. Only the final result processing is
different.</p>
<p>The order of rules in the ruleset is important because the
rewriting engine processes them in a special (and not very
obvious) order. The rule is this: The rewriting engine loops
through the ruleset rule by rule (<code class="directive"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule">RewriteRule</a></code> directives) and
when a particular rule matches it optionally loops through
existing corresponding conditions (<code>RewriteCond</code>
directives). For historical reasons the conditions are given
first, and so the control flow is a little bit long-winded. See
Figure 1 for more details.</p>
<p class="figure">
<img src="../images/rewrite_process_uri.png" alt="Flow of RewriteRule and RewriteCond matching" /><br />
<dfn>Figure 1:</dfn>The control flow through the rewriting ruleset
</p>
<p>First the URL is matched against the
<em>Pattern</em> of each rule. If it fails, mod_rewrite
immediately stops processing this rule, and continues with the
next rule. If the <em>Pattern</em> matches, mod_rewrite looks
for corresponding rule conditions (RewriteCond directives,
appearing immediately above the RewriteRule in the configuration).
If none are present, it substitutes the URL with a new value, which is
constructed from the string <em>Substitution</em>, and goes on
with its rule-looping. But if conditions exist, it starts an
inner loop for processing them in the order that they are
listed. For conditions, the logic is different: we don't match
a pattern against the current URL. Instead we first create a
string <em>TestString</em> by expanding variables,
back-references, map lookups, <em>etc.</em> and then we try
to match <em>CondPattern</em> against it. If the pattern
doesn't match, the complete set of conditions and the
corresponding rule fails. If the pattern matches, then the
next condition is processed until no more conditions are
available. If all conditions match, processing is continued
with the substitution of the URL with
<em>Substitution</em>.</p>
</div></div>
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<p><span>Available Languages: </span><a href="../en/rewrite/tech.html" title="English"> en </a> |
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</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img src="../images/up.gif" alt="top" /></a></div><div class="section"><h2><a id="comments_section" name="comments_section">Comments</a></h2><div class="warning"><strong>Notice:</strong><br />This is not a Q&A section. Comments placed here should be pointed towards suggestions on improving the documentation or server, and may be removed again by our moderators if they are either implemented or considered invalid/off-topic. Questions on how to manage the Apache HTTP Server should be directed at either our IRC channel, #httpd, on Freenode, or sent to our <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/lists.html">mailing lists</a>.</div>
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