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<title>Advanced Techniques with mod_rewrite - Apache HTTP Server</title>
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<p class="menu"><a href="../mod/">Modules</a> | <a href="../mod/directives.html">Directives</a> | <a href="../faq/">FAQ</a> | <a href="../glossary.html">Glossary</a> | <a href="../sitemap.html">Sitemap</a></p>
<p class="apache">Apache HTTP Server Version 2.2</p>
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<a href="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</a> > <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/">HTTP Server</a> > <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/">Documentation</a> > <a href="../">Version 2.2</a> > <a href="./">Rewrite</a></div><div id="page-content"><div id="preamble"><h1>Advanced Techniques with mod_rewrite</h1>
<div class="toplang">
<p><span>Available Languages: </span><a href="../en/rewrite/avoid.html" title="English"> en </a></p>
</div>
<p>This document supplements the <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code>
<a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">reference documentation</a>. It provides
a few advanced techniques and tricks using mod_rewrite.</p>
<div class="warning">Note that many of these examples won't work unchanged in your
particular server configuration, so it's important that you understand
them, rather than merely cutting and pasting the examples into your
configuration.</div>
</div>
<div id="quickview"><ul id="toc"><li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#sharding">URL-based sharding accross multiple backends</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#on-the-fly-content">On-the-fly Content-Regeneration</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#load-balancing">Load Balancing</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#autorefresh">Document With Autorefresh</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#structuredhomedirs">Structured Userdirs</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#redirectanchors">Redirecting Anchors</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#time-dependent">Time-Dependent Rewriting</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#setenvvars">Set Environment Variables Based On URL Parts</a></li>
</ul><h3>See also</h3><ul class="seealso"><li><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">Module documentation</a></li><li><a href="intro.html">mod_rewrite introduction</a></li><li><a href="remapping.html">Redirection and remapping</a></li><li><a href="access.html">Controlling access</a></li><li><a href="vhosts.html">Virtual hosts</a></li><li><a href="proxy.html">Proxying</a></li><li><a href="rewritemap.html">Using RewriteMap</a></li><li><a href="avoid.html">When not to use mod_rewrite</a></li></ul></div>
<div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="sharding" id="sharding">URL-based sharding accross multiple backends</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>A common technique for distributing the burden of
server load or storage space is called "sharding".
When using this method, a front-end server will use the
url to consistently "shard" users or objects to separate
backend servers.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
<p>A mapping is maintained, from users to target servers, in
external map files. They look like:</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
user1 physical_host_of_user1<br />
user2 physical_host_of_user2<br />
: :
</code></p></div>
<p>We put this into a <code>map.users-to-hosts</code> file. The
aim is to map;</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
/u/user1/anypath
</code></p></div>
<p>to</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
http://physical_host_of_user1/u/user/anypath
</code></p></div>
<p>thus every URL path need not be valid on every backend physical
host. The following ruleset does this for us with the help of the map
files assuming that server0 is a default server which will be used if
a user has no entry in the map:</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
RewriteEngine on<br />
<br />
RewriteMap users-to-hosts txt:/path/to/map.users-to-hosts<br />
<br />
RewriteRule ^/u/<strong>([^/]+)</strong>/?(.*) http://<strong>${users-to-hosts:$1|server0}</strong>/u/$1/$2
</code></p></div>
</dd>
</dl>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="on-the-fly-content" id="on-the-fly-content">On-the-fly Content-Regeneration</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>We wish to dynamically generate content, but store it
statically once it is generated. This rule will check for the
existence of the static file, and if it's not there, generate
it. The static files can be removed periodically, if desired (say,
via cron) and will be regenerated on demand.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
This is done via the following ruleset:
<div class="example"><p><code>
# This example is valid in per-directory context only<br />
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} <strong>!-s</strong><br />
RewriteRule ^page\.<strong>html</strong>$ page.<strong>cgi</strong> [T=application/x-httpd-cgi,L]
</code></p></div>
<p>Here a request for <code>page.html</code> leads to an
internal run of a corresponding <code>page.cgi</code> if
<code>page.html</code> is missing or has filesize
null. The trick here is that <code>page.cgi</code> is a
CGI script which (additionally to its <code>STDOUT</code>)
writes its output to the file <code>page.html</code>.
Once it has completed, the server sends out
<code>page.html</code>. When the webmaster wants to force
a refresh of the contents, he just removes
<code>page.html</code> (typically from <code>cron</code>).</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="load-balancing" id="load-balancing">Load Balancing</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>We wish to randomly distribute load across several servers
using mod_rewrite.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
<p>We'll use <code class="directive"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritemap">RewriteMap</a></code> and a list of servers
to accomplish this.</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
RewriteEngine on<br />
RewriteMap lb rnd:/path/to/serverlist.txt<br />
<br />
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://${lb:servers}/$1 [P,L]
</code></p></div>
<p><code>serverlist.txt</code> will contain a list of the servers:</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
<br />
servers one.example.com|two.example.com|three.example.com<br />
</code></p></div>
<p>If you want one particular server to get more of the load than the
others, add it more times to the list.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Discussion</dt>
<dd>
<p>Apache comes with a load-balancing module -
<code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_proxy_balancer.html">mod_proxy_balancer</a></code> - which is far more flexible and
featureful than anything you can cobble together using mod_rewrite.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="autorefresh" id="autorefresh">Document With Autorefresh</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>Wouldn't it be nice, while creating a complex web page, if
the web browser would automatically refresh the page every
time we save a new version from within our editor?
Impossible?</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
<p>No! We just combine the MIME multipart feature, the
web server NPH feature, and the URL manipulation power of
<code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code>. First, we establish a new
URL feature: Adding just <code>:refresh</code> to any
URL causes the 'page' to be refreshed every time it is
updated on the filesystem.</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
RewriteRule ^(/[uge]/[^/]+/?.*):refresh /internal/cgi/apache/nph-refresh?f=$1
</code></p></div>
<p>Now when we reference the URL</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
/u/foo/bar/page.html:refresh
</code></p></div>
<p>this leads to the internal invocation of the URL</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
/internal/cgi/apache/nph-refresh?f=/u/foo/bar/page.html
</code></p></div>
<p>The only missing part is the NPH-CGI script. Although
one would usually say "left as an exercise to the reader"
;-) I will provide this, too.</p>
<div class="example"><pre>
#!/sw/bin/perl
##
## nph-refresh -- NPH/CGI script for auto refreshing pages
## Copyright (c) 1997 Ralf S. Engelschall, All Rights Reserved.
##
$| = 1;
# split the QUERY_STRING variable
@pairs = split(/&/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
foreach $pair (@pairs) {
($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
$name =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
$name = 'QS_' . $name;
$value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
eval "\$$name = \"$value\"";
}
$QS_s = 1 if ($QS_s eq '');
$QS_n = 3600 if ($QS_n eq '');
if ($QS_f eq '') {
print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "&lt;b&gt;ERROR&lt;/b&gt;: No file given\n";
exit(0);
}
if (! -f $QS_f) {
print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "&lt;b&gt;ERROR&lt;/b&gt;: File $QS_f not found\n";
exit(0);
}
sub print_http_headers_multipart_begin {
print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n";
$bound = "ThisRandomString12345";
print "Content-type: multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary=$bound\n";
&print_http_headers_multipart_next;
}
sub print_http_headers_multipart_next {
print "\n--$bound\n";
}
sub print_http_headers_multipart_end {
print "\n--$bound--\n";
}
sub displayhtml {
local($buffer) = @_;
$len = length($buffer);
print "Content-type: text/html\n";
print "Content-length: $len\n\n";
print $buffer;
}
sub readfile {
local($file) = @_;
local(*FP, $size, $buffer, $bytes);
($x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $size) = stat($file);
$size = sprintf("%d", $size);
open(FP, "&lt;$file");
$bytes = sysread(FP, $buffer, $size);
close(FP);
return $buffer;
}
$buffer = &readfile($QS_f);
&print_http_headers_multipart_begin;
&displayhtml($buffer);
sub mystat {
local($file) = $_[0];
local($time);
($x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $mtime) = stat($file);
return $mtime;
}
$mtimeL = &mystat($QS_f);
$mtime = $mtime;
for ($n = 0; $n &lt; $QS_n; $n++) {
while (1) {
$mtime = &mystat($QS_f);
if ($mtime ne $mtimeL) {
$mtimeL = $mtime;
sleep(2);
$buffer = &readfile($QS_f);
&print_http_headers_multipart_next;
&displayhtml($buffer);
sleep(5);
$mtimeL = &mystat($QS_f);
last;
}
sleep($QS_s);
}
}
&print_http_headers_multipart_end;
exit(0);
##EOF##
</pre></div>
</dd>
</dl>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="structuredhomedirs" id="structuredhomedirs">Structured Userdirs</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>Some sites with thousands of users use a
structured homedir layout, <em>i.e.</em> each homedir is in a
subdirectory which begins (for instance) with the first
character of the username. So, <code>/~larry/anypath</code>
is <code>/home/<strong>l</strong>/larry/public_html/anypath</code>
while <code>/~waldo/anypath</code> is
<code>/home/<strong>w</strong>/waldo/public_html/anypath</code>.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
<p>We use the following ruleset to expand the tilde URLs
into the above layout.</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
RewriteEngine on<br />
RewriteRule ^/~(<strong>([a-z])</strong>[a-z0-9]+)(.*) /home/<strong>$2</strong>/$1/public_html$3
</code></p></div>
</dd>
</dl>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="redirectanchors" id="redirectanchors">Redirecting Anchors</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>By default, redirecting to an HTML anchor doesn't work,
because mod_rewrite escapes the <code> turning it into <code>%23</code>. This, in turn, breaks the
redirection.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
<p>Use the <code>[NE]</code> flag on the
<code>RewriteRule</code>. NE stands for No Escape.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>Discussion:</dt>
<dd>This technique will of course also work with other
special characters that mod_rewrite, by default, URL-encodes.</dd>
</dl>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="time-dependent" id="time-dependent">Time-Dependent Rewriting</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>We wish to use mod_rewrite to serve different content based on
the time of day.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
<p>There are a lot of variables named <code>TIME_xxx</code>
for rewrite conditions. In conjunction with the special
lexicographic comparison patterns <code><STRING</code>,
<code>>STRING</code> and <code>=STRING</code> we can
do time-dependent redirects:</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
RewriteEngine on<br />
RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} >0700<br />
RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} <1900<br />
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$ foo.day.html [L]<br />
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$ foo.night.html
</code></p></div>
<p>This provides the content of <code>foo.day.html</code>
under the URL <code>foo.html</code> from
<code>07:01-18:59</code> and at the remaining time the
contents of <code>foo.night.html</code>.</p>
<div class="warning"><code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_cache.html">mod_cache</a></code>, intermediate proxies
and browsers may each cache responses and cause the either page to be
shown outside of the time-window configured.
<code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_expires.html">mod_expires</a></code> 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.</div>
</dd>
</dl>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="setenvvars" id="setenvvars">Set Environment Variables Based On URL Parts</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt>Description:</dt>
<dd>
<p>At time, we want to maintain some kind of status when we
perform a rewrite. For example, you want to make a note that
you've done that rewrite, so that you can check later to see if a
request can via that rewrite. One way to do this is by setting an
environment variable.</p>
</dd>
<dt>Solution:</dt>
<dd>
<p>Use the [E] flag to set an environment variable.</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
RewriteEngine on<br />
RewriteRule ^/horse/(.*) /pony/$1 [E=<strong>rewritten:1</strong>]
</code></p></div>
<p>Later in your ruleset you might check for this environment
variable using a RewriteCond:</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
RewriteCond %{ENV:rewritten} =1
</code></p></div>
</dd>
</dl>
</div></div>
<div class="bottomlang">
<p><span>Available Languages: </span><a href="../en/rewrite/avoid.html" title="English"> en </a></p>
</div><div id="footer">
<p class="apache">Copyright 2012 The Apache Software Foundation.<br />Licensed under the <a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0">Apache License, Version 2.0</a>.</p>
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