MultiViews and Canonicalising URLs
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I recently enabled MultiViews so I could remove the .html extension from the pages of Project Cerbera. Now I have two URLs which are equally valid for each PHP-augmented HTML file. For example, the Blog Archive:
- http://projectcerbera.com/blog/archive.html
- http://projectcerbera.com/blog/archive
I tried this:
| Code: |
| # Strip ".html" from end of any incoming request:
RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*)\.html$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1 |
Another way I found was Dave Shea's Rewrite woes...but I can't figure out what actually worked for him.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
Last edited by Ben Millard on 14 Feb 2007 02:06 am; edited 1 time in total
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unless i'm mistaken, i don't think there's any way around your dilemma. if you attempted a rewrite rule to redirect non-extensionless names to their extensionless equivalents, i think it would send the server in a loop (too many redirect warning in the browser etc)..._________________
Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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Beware of confusing GoogleBot, if you enable MultiViews. Shouldn't be a problem with .html files._________________
Jim O'Donnell
work: Royal Observatory Greenwich
play: eatyourgreens
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I think this should do it:
| Code: |
| RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)+\.html$ $1 [R=301,L] <IfModule mod_headers.c> ErrorHeader unset Content-Location </IfModule> |
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Simon Pieters
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EYG: The PHP I include() at the start of each page sends a header() for Content-Type.
Zcorpan: When I use that, all requests end up at http://projectcerbera.com/home/cerbera/public_html/. I tried changing it to this:
| Code: |
| RewriteRule ^(.*)+\.html$ http://projectcerbera.com$1 [R=301,L]
<IfModule mod_headers.c> ErrorHeader unset Content-Location </IfModule> |
(EDIT) Slightly depressing piece of news is that Googlebot and some other spiders have visited while my URLs aren't canonicalised.
Turning off MultiViews and using a set of RewriteConds looks like a possibility:
- Extensioned URLs would be redirected to extensionless URLs.
- Extensionless URLs would be silently rewritten back to extensioned URLs.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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Well, after another day of playing with my test server and crawling around the Intertubes, I'm still nowhere with this. Each route I try, I end up with infinite redirects Redux predicted. Surely there's a way around this, just I'm too dumb to figure it out?
Doing a 301 Moved Permanently from /foo/bar.html to /foo/bar is easy:
| Code: |
| # Redirect ".html" to extensionless URLs:
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L] |
This new request for /foo/bar needs the extension added back on so the file /foo/bar.html is retrieved. I'm using this:
| Code: |
| # Rewrite extensionless URLs to ".html" page:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.*)/$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)$ RewriteRule !(\.)(.*)$ %1.html [L,NC] |
Each of these samples works on their own. But I need both to work together for the URLs to be both technology-neutral and canonical. Is there a way to check if the request came from a redirect? Would moving the redirect into the PHP allow me to break the loop by detecting some sort of condition?
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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I had a problem with a single URL which I presume was caused by the same issues and couldn't get anything to work for a while. This following did what I wanted though:
| Code: |
| RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} "^GET /foo/bar.html" RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.org/foo/bar [R=301] |
It avoids an infiniate loop since "THE_REQUEST" is what the UA asks for, not what the server translates it to on the second pass. I imagine you can do some regexp matching to make it work generally on multiple files.
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Ok, this works for me, and will also get rid of www.
| Code: |
| RewriteEngine On
# get rid of www. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.org$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.org/$1 [R=301,L] # get rid of .html RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST)\ (.+)\.html(&[^\ ]+)*\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html$ /$1 [R=301,L] # get rid of Content-Location <IfModule mod_headers.c> ErrorHeader unset Content-Location </IfModule> |
If you want it to work with query strings then use this instead:
| Code: |
| RewriteEngine On
# get rid of www. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.org$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.org/$1 [R=301,L] # get rid of .html RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST)\ (.+)\.html(\?.*)?(&[^\ ]+)*\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$ /$1$2 [R=301,L] # get rid of Content-Location <IfModule mod_headers.c> ErrorHeader unset Content-Location </IfModule> |
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Simon Pieters
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Aha, that's the sort of thing I've been looking for, Chaos. Zcorpan, I dropped that in and it works perfectly on my test server (Apache 2.0.59).
However, I get infinite redirect loops when I use it on Project Cerbera (Apache 1.3.37 (seriously, I'm not making a "1337" joke)). Specifically, requesting a URL with a .html extension matching a file which exists.
Apparently, the API Phases in 1.3 are different to API Phases in 2.0. So my best guess is we're doing something in a way which is incompatible with Apache 1.3's API phases?
I tried removing everything from my .htaccess apart from the essentials (like enabling MultiViews). No errors. But then adding either of zcorpan's samples, Project Cerbera loops. So it's not something else in there causing the problem.
Thanks to everyone so far. It's all helpful and we're getting closer each time!
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
Last edited by Ben Millard on 16 Feb 2007 09:49 am; edited 1 time in total
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Hmm.... try this:
| Code: |
| RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$ /$1$2 [R=301,L] |
...or you need to specify "http://example.org/$1$2" instead of just "/$1$2"?
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Simon Pieters
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Yay, this works!
| Code: |
| RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] |
- /sitemap.html
- /gta1/utilities.html - old location, a Redirect operates on it.
- /tutorials/gta1/info/important-editors.html
- /tutorials/sa_handling-definition.html - old URL scheme, a RedirectMatch works on it.
However, there's a slightly undesirable side-effect. When visiting a folder, like /tutorials/gta1/info/, you get redirected to /tutorials/gta1/info/index. I've gotten around this by adding a preceeding RewriteCond:
| Code: |
| # get rid of .html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.+)index\.html(\?.*)?$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$ RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] |
Could it be written more concisely?_________________
My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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Well, you could make "./index" redirect to "./", so that also gets canonicalized. How to do so I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. 
...just kidding.
The whole shebang should look like this:
| Code: |
| RewriteEngine On
# get rid of www. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.projectcerbera\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1 [R=301,L] # get rid of .html RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \.html RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] # redirect index to ./ RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] # get rid of Content-Location <IfModule mod_headers.c> ErrorHeader unset Content-Location </IfModule> |
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Simon Pieters
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When I drop that in, I get infinite redirect loops with index pages. Making both RewriteConds use %{THE_REQUEST} fixed it:
| Code: |
| # Get rid of 'www.':
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.projectcerbera\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1 [R=301,L] # Get rid of '.html': RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \.html RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] # Get rid of 'index' in directories: RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] # get rid of Content-Location <IfModule mod_headers.c> ErrorHeader unset Content-Location </IfModule> |
Homepage:
- / - stays as this. Pass.
- /index - redirects to /. Pass.
- /index.html - redirects to /. Pass.
- /blog - redirects to /blog/. Pass.
- /blog/ - stays as this. Pass.
- /blog/index - redirects to /blog/. Pass.
- /blog/index.html - redirects to /blog/. Pass.
- blog/2007/02 - stays as this. Pass.
- blog/2007/02.html - redirects to /blog/2007/02. Pass.
- /gta1/utilities.html - redirects to /tutorials/gta1/info/important-editors. Pass.
- /misc/authorbiography.html - redirects to /misc/ben-millard. Pass.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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Oops. ".html" or "index" in a query string results in a loop.
This should fix it:
| Code: |
| # Get rid of 'www.':
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.projectcerbera\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1 [R=301,L] # Get rid of '.html': RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \.html RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !\?.*\.html RewriteRule ^([^\?]+)\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] # Get rid of 'index' in directories: RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !\?.*\index RewriteRule ^([^\?]*)index\.html(\?.*)?$ http://projectcerbera.com/$1$2 [R=301,L] # get rid of Content-Location <IfModule mod_headers.c> ErrorHeader unset Content-Location </IfModule> |
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Simon Pieters
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