: Mod_rewrite works within directory not on root I am having a problem with my RewriteRule for the querystring portion. What I am able to debug is that the rule is being triggered at least because

@Murphy175

I found my way through my issue. As suggested by Eric Brandel I just made a rule with hard coded values for tag_name and tag_id as

RewriteRule ^test/(w+)/(d+)/?$ tags.php?tag_name=extra&tag_id=4


And I was able to get my Query parameters then I changes my RewriteRules to

# Rewrite rule for tags
RewriteRule ^tag/(w+)/(d+)/?$ tags.php?tag_name=&tag_id= [L]
RewriteRule ^tag/(w+)/?$ tags.php?tag_name= [L]
RewriteRule ^tag/?$ tags.php?tag_name= [L]


changing tags/ to tag/ in the URI to match and my problem was solved. I started getting all the query parameters to tags.php.
So, It seems I had the trouble of content negotition as suggested by schwarzbrot
Thanks to Eric Brandel, schwarzbrot and w3d for their valuable feedback to solve this long troubling issue.

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@Vandalay111

Various causes are possible here. It would be helpful to know more about your setup (folder layout, virtual host configuration and especially any other contents of your .htaccess files). Some things that come to my mind:

As Eric Brandel points out, mod_rewrite will apply all rules present in your .htaccess file (or server config) one by one unless [L] is used to stop processing. The rewritten URL could thus become changed again by subsequent RewriteRules (are there any?) in your .htaccess file before the page is finally being rendered. If this is the case, using [L] at the end of all three lines should be enough to solve your problem.

In situations where folders of different subdomains are placed inside of each other, you might need to tell mod_rewrite explicity that the current path is on root level, or the rules will not trigger:

RewriteBase /


If this doesn't help I would recommend to check if mod_rewrite triggers at all, e.g. by using a very simple redirect rule like this one:

RewriteRule .* /?hello [R,L]


Reason: It might even be possible that the rendering of tags.php is not due to mod_rewrite, but to apache automatically adding the extension .php when /tags is called (see here). You might need to use RewriteEngine On to turn mod_rewrite on, since has to be activated individually for each virtual host. Maybe it is not yet active on your subdomain.

If you are not sure which rule is being triggered currently, you could try to find out by e.g. turning rules temporarily into a redirect instead of a rewrite:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^tags/(w+)/(d+)/?$ tags.php?tag_name=&tag_id= [R,L]
RewriteRule ^tags/(w+)/?$ tags.php?tag_name= [R,L]
RewriteRule ^tags/?$ tags.php?tag_name= [R,L]


Edit: Maybe this prevents the server from triggering the rule if the script goes by the the same name, so you can keep "tags" as the folder name:

Options -Multiviews


(see stackoverflow.com/questions/444592/mod-rewrite-rules-and-content-negotiation for another example)

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@Frith620

With .htaccess, if a request matches multiple rules, it will utilize the last one found, unless you tell it to stop processing. You can do that with adding [PT,L] to the end of each line.

# Rewrite rule for tags
RewriteRule ^tags/(w+)/(d+)/?$ restAPI.php?type=tags&tag_name=&tag_id= [PT,L]
RewriteRule ^tags/(w+)/?$ restAPI.php?type=tags&tag_name= [PT,L]
RewriteRule ^tags/?$ restAPI.php?type=tags&tag_name= [PT,L]


PT Flag: httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/flags.html#flag_pt
L Flag: httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/flags.html#flag_l
I believe [PT,L] may be overkill, but I've seen it used a lot. It adds clarity, in my opinion. Using [PT] alone may work.

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