CODEWITHSUNDEEP
apache.htaccessmod-rewrite
Kyle
Kyle

Reputation: 31

How to hide part of a URL from clients using htaccess?

I'm working on a website running on an Apache server. The PHP factory makes and takes URLs that look like this:

site.com/page/view/[id]/[vanity-url]

However, the client wants to hide part of the URL from view, so in the browser it appears as:

site.com/[vanity-url]

The server still needs to see the full URL.

I've tried various RewriteRules after hours of searching, and the closest I seem to have come is:

RewriteRule ^page/view/(.*)/(.*)$ /$2 [R,L]

...but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. I know for sure that my .htacces is working.

What am I doing wrong?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 379

Answers (1)

Mike Rockétt
Mike Rockétt

Reputation: 9007

Unfortunately, this isn't possible. Let me explain why:

You state that the server needs to see the full URL. Specifically, this includes the id segment, which I am sure your framework needs (it wouln't need it if the server only needs to see the vanity segment). The code you have provided redirects the full URL to the vanity URL, thus making the full URL invisible to the server for the next request.

So, navigating to /page/view/2/about-us would redirect to /about-us, and the address bar would change to reflect that. This causes a new request to be sent to the server, containing only the /about-us vanity URL.

As a result, you would need to rewrite the vanity URL back to the full URL (without redirecting, so that the /about-us stays in the address bar as-is), but you wouldn't be able to do this, as the vanity URL does not contain the id segment, which seems to be a requirement for the framework to serve the correct response. Keep in mind that Apache cannot guess the ID for that particular vanity URL.

Upvotes: 1

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