Talk:Eliminating index.php from the url/Sy's mod rewrite rules

A note to readers: I don't maintain this page, but I do maintain similar notes on my own site. See http://jrandomhacker.info/Mod_rewrite

Sy's mod_rewrite rules

I have moved my wiki into a subdirectory, and so I can no longer use these exact rules. I will have to revisit the rules to work with a subdirectory, because minor playing with these rules didn't work for me.

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rewrite_rules
  • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rewrite_rules#Simplifying_the_url-_hiding_.2Fwiki.2Findex.php.3Ftitle.

I spent far too much time playing around with something which should be properly documented. Many of the other suggestions are broken to one degree or another, so I've been trying to integrate all that experience into something that would actually work for me. My goal is still to make one proper set of instructions appropriate for everyone interested. We need to obsolete all of those old notes. This is nuts.

Finally, the rules work as expected! Are there other things I didn't account for? Are there other entries I can add to the "testing" section? If you can help, especially if you can modify these rules with ones that work, please please email me so I can use those changes. (sy1234 at gmail)

I'm especially interested in making this universal for both those who use / and who use /wiki

-- Sy / ^(talk) 10:54, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Special:Version

Mine reports this:

• MediaWiki (http://wikipedia.sf.net/): 1.3.11
• PHP (http://www.php.net/): 5.0.3 (apache2handler)
• MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/): 4.1.10

If your numbers are different, especially your MediaWiki version, things may work a bit differently for you. Don't despair.. try things out and if they don't work come chat and we'll work on the problem together.

LocalSettings.php

I don't use localhost/mediawiki/Main_Page or localhost/wiki/Main_Page or the like.. just localhost/Main_Page. This means that I changed references to /wiki to / and also customised my wgArticlePath:

$wgArticlePath = "/$1";

httpd.conf

modify apache's httpd.conf

Many installations have this done for you by default. To be safe, search for "rewrite" in your httpd.conf and uncomment the line which looks something like:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Append the following to the bottom of your httpd.conf:

The rules

# Allow rewriting URLs
RewriteEngine on

# If using a subdirectory like htdocs/wiki/  Not necessary when the wiki is in htdocs/ (i.e. the root)
# RewriteBase /wiki


# Don't rewrite requests for these MediaWiki subdirectories and files
# you may need to change "stylesheets" to "skins" (v1.4?)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(stylesheets|images)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(redirect|texvc|index).php

# other notible conditions
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt


# Make sure there is no query string - unless user is making a search
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ [OR] %{REQUEST_URI} ^/Special:Search


#I suspect that people who use /wiki will need the following line, but I'm not sure:
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/wiki$

# Rewrite URI/foo properly, this is the main rule.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php$1 [L,QSA,NE]		# Quirk: Truncates question marks (%3F)
#RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA,NE]	# Fails with ampersands (not tested)

Issues

BUGS

• Some template links still point to "index.php/foo" and would have to be hand-edited somehow. This includes entries in the sidebar and page tabs.

RFEs

• the installation directory should be in a variable
• the "Main_Page" should be in a variable

Quirks

• Somehow the rewrite rules allow one to use lowercase searches to go to an uppercase page. i.e. "Main page" goes to http://localhost/Main_Page
• Ugly edit URLs: http://localhost/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=edit
• Everything after a questionmark is ignored. I don't know if MediaWiki allows page titles with questionmarks in them. Frankly, I don't mind this quirk and so I have not done any experimentation for a resolution.
  • The main rewrite rule is known to not work with question marks (%3F).
    • a solution via an apache URL rewriting patch is discussed at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Apache_config#Patches

Testing

Start URL	Goal URL	Current status
http://localhost/	http://localhost/	pass with http://localhost/Main_Page
http://localhost/Main_Page	http://localhost/Main_Page	pass
http://localhost/Sandbox	http://localhost/Sandbox (if it exists)	pass
http://localhost/index.php/Special:Search?search=Sandbox	http://localhost/Sandbox (if it exists)	pass
http://localhost/index.php/Special:Search?search=Special:Version	http://localhost/Special:Version	pass
http://localhost/Special:Randompage	http://localhost/Page (as appropriate)	pass

Thank You,

-- User:195.128.121.21 07:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)