Apache Mod_rewrite Http To Https

Apache2 Mod Rewrite
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I was reading through the Apache documentation the other day as part of work on one of my pet projects (Thumber.co) and came across the following little tidbit (emphasis added).

mod_rewrite should be considered a last resort, when other alternatives are found wanting. Using it when there are simpler alternatives leads to configurations which are confusing, fragile, and hard to maintain.

–Apache docs

If you do not have access to your Apache server’s virtual hosts files, use an.htaccess file to rewrite HTTP requests to HTTPS. Add the following lines to a file named.htaccess file in your domain’s root directory (create the file if it doesn’t exist). HTTP connections can be redirected to HTTPS using the apache modrewrite module. Modrewrite should be available in every apache installation. Apache HTTP to HTTPS Redirect. Create a file with the name.htaccess in the website root directory which contains the following lines. Jan 01, 2020 In Apache, the preferred way to redirect HTTP to HTTPS is to configure the 301 redirect in the domain’s virtual host. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment.

Well, this got me thinking. I was in the process of updating Thumber to have everything redirect to HTTPS with no WWW prefix. I had implemented this functionality with mod_rewrite, but after reading the above I felt like making this better so I set out to convert redirects to use the basic Redirect directive, as provided by mod_alias.

My mod_rewrite starting point before any changes looked something like the following:

With the above, if the HTTP virtual host was hit, it would redirect to the non-WWW HTTPS equivalent path. If the HTTPS virtual host was hit and www.thumber.co was the host then it would redirect to thumber.co. This seemed pretty clean as far as mod_rewrite go, but its still mod_rewrite. The following is what I came up with as a replacement.

Much more straightforward! The only gotcha in the above is that the If directive is new to Apache 2.4. If you’re running an older version, you may still be stuck with mod_rewrite for the HTTPS virtual host, though the HTTP virtual host could still use the Redirect directive in an older Apache version.

Introduction

Apache's mod_rewrite can be used to manipulate URLs. It is compiled into the base Apache Web Server.This module provides the ability to manipulate URLs prior to determining the appropriate file or handing off to a script. It can help you, if you want to offer different URLs for the same file. This is most commonly used when a visitor goes to a certain web address, but the server returns a different page.This module uses a rule-based rewriting engine to rewrite requested URLs on the fly. It supports an unlimited number of rules to provide a really flexible and powerful URL manipulation mechanism. It can hide sensitive information, such as query strings, from URL requests. This can potentially enhance website safety.

In this tutorial, we will explain how to enable mod_rewrite and demonstrate some common ways to use it in Apache on CentOS 7.

Requirements

A server running CentOS 7

Install Apache

Before we begin with the mod_rewrite module setup, we need to install the Apache web server.

To install Apache, run the following command:

After installing Apache, start the httpd service and enable it to start automatically on boot.

We can do this using the following commands:

Next, we should allow access to the default Apache port 80 (HTTP) using firewalld.

We can do this by running the following command:

Now, reload the firewall service for the changes to take effect.

Enable mod_rewrite Module

The mod_rewrite module is enabled by default on CentOS 7. If you find it is not enabled on your server, you can enable it by editing 00-base.conf file located in /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/ directory.

Add or uncomment the following line:

Save and close the file, then restart the httpd service:

Enable .htaccess File

Once the mod_rewrite module has been activated, you can set up your URL rewrites by creating an .htaccess file in your default document root directory.A .htaccess file allows us to modify our rewrite rules without accessing server configuration files. For this reason, .htaccess is critical to your web server.Before we begin, we need to allow Apache to read .htaccess files located under the /var/www/html directory.

You can do this by editing httpd.conf file:

Find the section <directory /var/www/html> and change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All

Save and exit.

Now restart Apache to put the change into effect:

Configure Rewrite Module

In this section, we will explain basic mod_rewrite syntax and give some examples.

You can write RewriteRules using the following format:

Apache2 Mod Rewrite

RewriteRule: This directive specifies the name of the the mod_rewrite directive that you want to use.
Pattern: This directive specifies a regular expression that matches the desired string
Substitution: This directive specifies the path of the actual URL of the page with the information you want to display.
Flags: A flag is a tag at the end of the Rewrite Rule directive that specifies optional parameters that can modify the rule.

Let's discuss RewriteRules with some examples:

Redirect www to non-www

If you want to redirect users from www to a plain non-www domain, you will need to create .htaccess file in Apache document root directory.

Change directories to your Document root:

Create the .htaccess file:

Add the following content:

Save and exit the file.

We can use curl to test that the www domain redirects to the non-www domain:

You should see the following output:

Above output shows the non-www redirect location http://yourdomain.com/

Redirect non-www to www

If you want to redirect users from a plain non-www domain to a www domain, add the following content to your .htaccess file:

Add the following content:

Save and exit the file.

Now, use curl command to ensure that the non-www domain redirects to the www domain:

You should see the following output:

Above output shows the www redirect location http://www.yourdomain.com/

Redirect All Website Pages

If you want to redirect all pages from 'olddomain.com' to 'newdomain.com', edit the .htaccess file:

Add the following content: