Redirecting and Remapping with mod_rewrite - Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4








Modules | Directives | FAQ | Glossary | Sitemap | Report a bug
Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4



Apache > HTTP Server > Documentation > Version 2.4 > RewriteRedirecting and Remapping with mod_rewrite


Available Languages:  en  |
 fr 



This document supplements the mod_rewrite
reference documentation. It describes
how you can use mod_rewrite to redirect and remap
request. This includes many examples of common uses of mod_rewrite,
including detailed descriptions of how each works.


 From Old to New (internal)
 Forcing HTTPS
 Exempting ACME challenge requests from HTTPS redirect
 Trailing Slash Normalization
 Front Controller / Application Routing
 Rewriting From Old to New (external)
 Resource Moved to Another Server
 Backward Compatibility for file extension change
 Canonical Hostnames
 Search for pages in more than one directory
 Canonical URLs
 Moved DocumentRoot
 Rewrite query string
 Structured Userdirs
 Redirecting Anchors
 Time-Dependent Rewriting
 On-the-fly Content-Regeneration
See alsoModule documentationmod_rewrite introductionPer-directory RewritesRewriteRule FlagsVirtual hostsUsing RewriteMapWhen not to use mod_rewriteTechnical details


From Old to New (internal) ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      Assume we have recently renamed the page
      foo.html to bar.html and now want
      to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. However,
      we want that users of the old URL even not recognize that
      the pages was renamed - that is, we don't want the address to
      change in their browser.
    

    Solution:

    
      We rewrite the old URL to the new one internally via the
      following rule:

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteRule    "^/foo\.html$"  "/bar.html" [PT]

    




Forcing HTTPS ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      You want all HTTP requests to be redirected to HTTPS. This
      is one of the most common uses of mod_rewrite,
      but in most cases it is better accomplished without it.
    

    Solution:

    

      The preferred approach uses a
      Redirect directive in a
      dedicated HTTP virtual host:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.example.com
    Redirect permanent "/" "https://www.example.com/"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName www.example.com
    # ... SSL configuration goes here
</VirtualHost>


    

    Discussion:

    
      If you do not have access to the main server configuration and
      must use a .htaccess file, mod_rewrite
      is the appropriate tool:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond "%{HTTPS}" !=on
RewriteRule "^(.*)" "https://%{SERVER_NAME}$1" [R=301,L]


      The %{HTTPS} variable is set to on
      when the connection is using SSL/TLS, and is empty or
      off otherwise. Using R=301 issues a
      permanent redirect, which tells search engines to update their
      index.

      See also the When not to use
      mod_rewrite document for more discussion of the
      Redirect approach.

      Behind a load balancer or SSL terminator
      The %{HTTPS} variable is not a general-purpose
      environment variable — it queries mod_ssl
      directly. If SSL/TLS is terminated at an upstream load balancer
      or reverse proxy, mod_ssl is not handling the
      connection and %{HTTPS} will always report
      off, even when the original client connected over
      HTTPS.

      In this situation, check the header set by the upstream proxy
      instead. Most load balancers set
      X-Forwarded-Proto:
      

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond "%{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto}" =http [NC]
RewriteRule "^(.*)" "https://%{SERVER_NAME}$1" [R=301,L]


      
      Only trust X-Forwarded-Proto if you control the
      upstream proxy and it overwrites the header on every request. An
      attacker can forge this header when connecting directly to your
      server. Consider restricting access so that only your load
      balancer can reach the backend, or use
      mod_remoteip to validate the source.
      

    
  



Exempting ACME challenge requests from HTTPS redirect ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      You have forced all traffic to HTTPS (as above), but your
      ACME client (Let's Encrypt, Certbot, etc.) needs plain HTTP
      access to /.well-known/acme-challenge/ to complete
      domain validation.
    

    Solution:

    
      Place an exception before your HTTPS redirect
      rule:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule "^/\.well-known/acme-challenge/" - [L]
RewriteCond "%{HTTPS}" !=on
RewriteRule "^(.*)" "https://%{SERVER_NAME}$1" [R=301,L]

    

    Discussion:

    
      The dash (-) substitution means "do not rewrite."
      Combined with [L], it stops rule processing for any
      request matching the ACME challenge path, allowing it to be
      served over plain HTTP. All other requests continue to the
      next rule and are redirected to HTTPS as usual.

      If you are using the Redirect approach in a dedicated
      port-80 VirtualHost, use an
      Alias and
      RedirectMatch
      instead:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.example.com

    # Allow ACME challenges over HTTP
    Alias "/.well-known/acme-challenge/" "/var/www/acme/.well-known/acme-challenge/"
    <Directory "/var/www/acme/.well-known/acme-challenge">
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    # Everything else goes to HTTPS
    RedirectMatch permanent "^/(?!\.well-known/acme-challenge/)(.*)$" "https://www.example.com/$1"
</VirtualHost>


    
  



Trailing Slash Normalization ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      You want to ensure that URLs for directories always end with
      a trailing slash, or conversely, that they never do. This is a
      common requirement for SEO and for consistent URL handling by
      web applications.
    

    Solution:

    
      To add a trailing slash to URLs that map to directories:

RewriteCond "%{REQUEST_FILENAME}" -d
RewriteCond "%{REQUEST_URI}" "!/$"
RewriteRule "^(.*)$" "$1/" [R=301,L]


      To remove a trailing slash (except for actual directories):

RewriteCond "%{REQUEST_FILENAME}" !-d
RewriteCond "%{REQUEST_URI}" "(.+)/$"
RewriteRule "^" "%1" [R=301,L]


    

    Discussion:

    
      Apache's mod_dir already handles trailing
      slash redirects for real directories when
      DirectorySlash is enabled
      (the default). You only need a mod_rewrite rule
      if you want to enforce trailing slash behavior for URLs that do
      not correspond to actual directories on disk, or if you want to
      remove trailing slashes.
    
  



Front Controller / Application Routing ¶

  

  Most modern web frameworks route all requests through a single
  entry point (a "front controller"). The
  FallbackResource directive
  handles this more simply and efficiently than
  mod_rewrite. See When NOT to use mod_rewrite
  for the recommended approach.

  If you genuinely need mod_rewrite for this (for
  example, to add conditions beyond "file doesn't exist"), see the
  per-directory rewrites
  document for an annotated example that also demonstrates
  RewriteBase usage.



Rewriting From Old to New (external) ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      Assume again that we have recently renamed the page
      foo.html to bar.html and now want
      to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. But this
      time we want that the users of the old URL get hinted to
      the new one, i.e. their browsers Location field should
      change, too.
    

    Solution:

    
      We force a HTTP redirect to the new URL which leads to a
      change of the browsers and thus the users view:

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteRule    "^/foo\.html$"  "bar.html"  [R]



Discussion

    
    In this example, as contrasted to the internal example above, we can simply
    use the Redirect directive. mod_rewrite was used in that earlier
    example in order to hide the redirect from the client:

    Redirect "/foo.html" "/bar.html"


    
  



Resource Moved to Another Server ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      If a resource has moved to another server, you may wish to have
      URLs continue to work for a time on the old server while people
      update their bookmarks.
    

    Solution:

    
      You can use mod_rewrite to redirect these URLs
      to the new server, but you might also consider using the Redirect
      or RedirectMatch directive.

#With mod_rewrite
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   "^/docs/(.+)"  "http://new.example.com/docs/$1"  [R,L]


#With RedirectMatch
RedirectMatch "^/docs/(.*)" "http://new.example.com/docs/$1"


#With Redirect
Redirect "/docs/" "http://new.example.com/docs/"

    

    Discussion:

    
      For simple redirections to another server, the
      Redirect or
      RedirectMatch directives
      are preferred, as they are simpler and more efficient.
    
  



Backward Compatibility for file extension change ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      How can we make URLs backward compatible (still
      existing virtually) after migrating document.YYYY
      to document.XXXX, e.g. after translating a
      bunch of .html files to .php?
    

    Solution:

    
      The URL is rewritten from the old extension to the new
      one only if the target file with the new extension exists
      and the original file with the old extension does not.
      Otherwise, the URL is left unchanged.

#   backward compatibility ruleset for
#   rewriting document.html to document.php
#   when and only when document.php exists
<Directory "/var/www/htdocs">
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteBase   "/var/www/htdocs"

    RewriteCond   "$1.php"           -f
    RewriteCond   "$1.html"          !-f
    RewriteRule   "^(.*).html$"      "$1.php"
</Directory>

    

    Discussion
    
    This example uses an often-overlooked feature of mod_rewrite,
    by taking advantage of the order of execution of the ruleset. In
    particular, mod_rewrite evaluates the left-hand-side of the
    RewriteRule before it evaluates the RewriteCond directives.
    Consequently, $1 is already defined by the time the RewriteCond
    directives are evaluated. This allows us to test for the existence
    of the original (document.html) and target
    (document.php) files using the same base filename.

    This ruleset is designed to use in a per-directory context (In a
    <Directory> block or in a .htaccess file), so that the
    -f checks are looking at the correct directory path.
    You may need to set a RewriteBase directive to specify the
    directory base that you're working in.
    
  



Canonical Hostnames ¶



      
        Description:

        The goal of this rule is to force the use of a particular
        hostname, in preference to other hostnames which may be used to
        reach the same site. For example, if you wish to force the use
        of www.example.com instead of
        example.com, you might use a variant of the
        following recipe.

        Solution:

        

The very best way to solve this doesn't involve mod_rewrite at all,
but rather uses the Redirect
directive placed in a virtual host for the non-canonical
hostname(s).

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName undesired.example.com
  ServerAlias example.com notthis.example.com

  Redirect "/" "http://www.example.com/"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.example.com
</VirtualHost>


You can alternatively accomplish this using the
<If>
directive: (2.4 and later)

<If "%{HTTP_HOST} != 'www.example.com'">
    Redirect "/" "http://www.example.com/"
</If>


Or, for example, to redirect a portion of your site to HTTPS, you
might do the following:

<If "%{SERVER_PROTOCOL} != 'HTTPS'">
    Redirect "/admin/" "https://www.example.com/admin/"
</If>


If, for whatever reason, you still want to use mod_rewrite
- if, for example, you need this to work with a larger set of RewriteRules -
you might use one of the recipes below.

For sites running on a port other than 80:
RewriteCond "%{HTTP_HOST}"   "!^www\.example\.com" [NC]
RewriteCond "%{HTTP_HOST}"   "!^$"
RewriteCond "%{SERVER_PORT}" "!^80$"
RewriteRule "^/?(.*)"        "http://www.example.com:%{SERVER_PORT}/$1" [L,R,NE]


And for a site running on port 80
RewriteCond "%{HTTP_HOST}"   "!^www\.example\.com"       [NC]
RewriteCond "%{HTTP_HOST}"   "!^$"
RewriteRule "^/?(.*)"        "http://www.example.com/$1" [L,R,NE]


        
        If you wanted to do this generically for all domain names - that
        is, if you want to redirect example.com to
        www.example.com for all possible values of
        example.com, you could use the following
        recipe:

To do the reverse - strip the www. prefix - swap the
condition:

RewriteCond "%{HTTP_HOST}" "^www\.(.+)$"              [NC]
RewriteRule "^(.*)"        "http://%1/$1"             [L,R,NE]


To generically add www. to any hostname:

RewriteCond "%{HTTP_HOST}" "!^www\."                    [NC]
RewriteCond "%{HTTP_HOST}" "!^$"
RewriteRule "^/?(.*)"      "http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1" [L,R,NE]


    These rulesets will work either in your main server configuration
    file, or in a .htaccess file placed in the DocumentRoot of the server.
    

    Discussion:

    
      If you have access to the server configuration, a
      Redirect in a dedicated
      <VirtualHost>
      is the cleanest approach. Canonicalizing the hostname ensures that
      search engines treat your site as a single entity and avoids
      cookie scope issues that arise when the same site is reachable
      under multiple names.
      Use the
      <If> directive
      as a middle ground, and mod_rewrite only if you
      are limited to .htaccess.
    





Search for pages in more than one directory ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      A particular resource might exist in one of several places, and
      we want to look in those places for the resource when it is
      requested. Perhaps we've recently rearranged our directory
      structure, dividing content into several locations.
    

    Solution:

    
      The following ruleset searches in two directories to find the
      resource, and, if not finding it in either place, will attempt to
      just serve it out of the location requested.

RewriteEngine on

#   first try to find it in dir1/...
#   ...and if found stop and be happy:
RewriteCond         "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/dir1/%{REQUEST_URI}"  -f
RewriteRule "^(.+)" "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/dir1/$1"  [L]

#   second try to find it in dir2/...
#   ...and if found stop and be happy:
RewriteCond         "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/dir2/%{REQUEST_URI}"  -f
RewriteRule "^(.+)" "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/dir2/$1"  [L]

#   else go on for other Alias or ScriptAlias directives,
#   etc.
RewriteRule "^"     "-"                                          [PT]

    

    Discussion:

    
      This is useful during migrations when content is being moved
      between directories. For permanent setups, consider using
      Alias or symbolic links
      instead.
    
  



Canonical URLs ¶




 Description:

   
     On some webservers there is more than one URL for a
     resource. Usually there are canonical URLs (which are be
     actually used and distributed) and those which are just
     shortcuts, internal ones, and so on. Independent of which URL the
     user supplied with the request, they should finally see the
     canonical one in their browser address bar.
   

   Solution:

     
       We do an external HTTP redirect for all non-canonical
       URLs to fix them in the location view of the Browser and
       for all subsequent requests. In the example ruleset below
       we replace /puppies and /canines
       by the canonical /dogs.

RewriteRule   "^/(puppies|canines)/(.*)"    "/dogs/$2"  [R]

        

     Discussion:
     
     This should really be accomplished with Redirect or RedirectMatch
     directives:

     RedirectMatch "^/(puppies|canines)/(.*)" "/dogs/$2"

     
      



Moved DocumentRoot ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
Usually the DocumentRoot
of the webserver directly relates to the URL "/".
But often this data is not really of top-level priority. For example,
you may wish for visitors, on first entering a site, to go to a
particular subdirectory /about/. This may be accomplished
using the following ruleset:


    Solution:

    
      We redirect the URL / to
      /about/:
      

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   "^/$"  "/about/"  [R]


Note that this can also be handled using the RedirectMatch directive:

RedirectMatch "^/$" "http://example.com/about/"


Note also that the example rewrites only the root URL. That is, it
rewrites a request for http://example.com/, but not a
request for http://example.com/page.html. If you have in
fact changed your document root - that is, if all of
your content is in fact in that subdirectory, it is greatly preferable
to simply change your DocumentRoot
directive, or move all of the content up one directory,
rather than rewriting URLs.





Rewrite query string ¶



Description:
You want to capture a particular value from a query string
and either replace it or incorporate it into another component
of the URL.

Solutions:

 Many of the solutions in this section will all use the same condition,
which leaves the matched value in the %2 backreference.  %1 is the beginning
of the query string (up to the key of intererest), and %3 is the remainder. This
condition is a bit complex for flexibility and to avoid double '&&' in the
substitutions.

  This solution removes the matching key and value:

# Remove mykey=???
RewriteCond "%{QUERY_STRING}" "(.*(?:^|&))mykey=([^&]*)&?(.*)&?$"
RewriteRule "(.*)"            "$1?%1%3"

  

  This solution uses the captured value in the URL substitution,
  discarding the rest of the original query by appending a '?':

# Copy from query string to PATH_INFO
RewriteCond "%{QUERY_STRING}" "(.*(?:^|&))mykey=([^&]*)&?(.*)&?$"
RewriteRule "(.*)"            "$1/products/%2/?" [PT]

  

  This solution checks the captured value in a subsequent condition:

# Capture the value of mykey in the query string
RewriteCond "%{QUERY_STRING}" "(.*(?:^|&))mykey=([^&]*)&?(.*)&?$"
RewriteCond "%2"              !=not-so-secret-value
RewriteRule "(.*)"            "-" [F]

  

  This solution shows the reverse of the previous ones, copying
      path components (perhaps PATH_INFO) from the URL into the query string.
# The desired URL might be /products/kitchen-sink, and the script expects
# /path?products=kitchen-sink.
RewriteRule "^/?path/([^/]+)/([^/]+)" "/path?$1=$2" [PT]

  




Discussion:


See also the [QSA] and
[QSD] flags, which control whether
the original query string is appended to or discarded from the
substitution.





Structured Userdirs ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      Some sites with thousands of users use a
      structured homedir layout, i.e. each homedir is in a
      subdirectory which begins (for instance) with the first
      character of the username. So, /~larry/anypath
      is /home/l/larry/public_html/anypath
      while /~waldo/anypath is
      /home/w/waldo/public_html/anypath.
    

    Solution:

    
      We use the following ruleset to expand the tilde URLs
      into the above layout.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   "^/~(([a-z])[a-z0-9]+)(.*)"  "/home/$2/$1/public_html$3"

    

    Discussion:

    
      This technique is primarily useful for large hosting
      environments with thousands of users. For most sites,
      mod_userdir handles tilde-based user URLs
      without requiring mod_rewrite.
    
  



Redirecting Anchors ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
    By default, redirecting to an HTML anchor doesn't work,
    because mod_rewrite escapes the # character,
    turning it into %23. This, in turn, breaks the
    redirection.
    

    Solution:

    
      Use the [NE] flag on the
      RewriteRule. NE stands for No Escape.
      
    

    Discussion:
    This technique will of course also work with other
    special characters that mod_rewrite, by default, URL-encodes.
  



Time-Dependent Rewriting ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      We wish to use mod_rewrite to serve different content based on
      the time of day.
    

    Solution:

    
      There are a lot of variables named TIME_xxx
      for rewrite conditions. In conjunction with the special
      lexicographic comparison patterns <STRING,
      >STRING and =STRING we can
      do time-dependent redirects:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   "%{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN}" >0700
RewriteCond   "%{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN}" <1900
RewriteRule   "^foo\.html$"             "foo.day.html" [L]
RewriteRule   "^foo\.html$"             "foo.night.html"


      This provides the content of foo.day.html
      under the URL foo.html from
      07:01-18:59 and at the remaining time the
      contents of foo.night.html.

      mod_cache, intermediate proxies
      and browsers may each cache responses and cause the either page to be
      shown outside of the time-window configured.
      mod_expires may be used to control this
      effect. You are, of course, much better off simply serving the
      content dynamically, and customizing it based on the time of day.

    

    Discussion:

    
      Serving dynamic content through your application is almost
      always a better approach. Caching by browsers, proxies, and
      mod_cache makes time-based rewriting unreliable
      in practice.
    
  



On-the-fly Content-Regeneration ¶

  

  
    Description:

    
      We wish to dynamically generate content, but store it
      statically once it is generated. This rule will check for the
      existence of the static file, and if it's not there, generate
      it. The static files can be removed periodically, if desired (say,
      via cron) and will be regenerated on demand.
    

    Solution:

    
      This is done via the following ruleset:

# This example is valid in per-directory context only
RewriteCond "%{REQUEST_URI}"   !-U
RewriteRule "^(.+)\.html$"     "/regenerate_page.cgi"   [PT,L]


    The -U operator determines whether the test string
    (in this case, REQUEST_URI) is a valid URL. It does
    this via a subrequest. In the event that this subrequest fails -
    that is, the requested resource doesn't exist - this rule invokes
    the CGI program /regenerate_page.cgi, which generates
    the requested resource and saves it into the document directory, so
    that the next time it is requested, a static copy can be served.

    In this way, documents that are infrequently updated can be served in
    static form. if documents need to be refreshed, they can be deleted
    from the document directory, and they will then be regenerated the
    next time they are requested.
    

    Discussion:

    
      Modern approaches such as mod_cache, CDN
      caching layers, or application-level caching provide more robust
      and controllable solutions for serving pre-generated static
      content. The -U subrequest test used here also
      carries a performance cost on every request.
    
  



Available Languages:  en  |
 fr 

Copyright 2026 The Apache Software Foundation.Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Modules | Directives | FAQ | Glossary | Sitemap | Report a bug