How can .htaccess change $_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]?

Question

I've a website at http://ex.com/web2/ this is a real path in my server, but I wanted visitors to be able to access the website also over the URL http://ex.com/web3/ (without changing the URL on the browser), so after looking around (and asking help) I added the following to my .htaccess :

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^web3/?$ /web2/ [L,NC]
    RewriteRule ^web3/(.+)$ /web2/$1 [L,NC]
</IfModule>

The "silent" redirect that DOES NOT change the browser URL works fine, but in PHP if I print $_SERVER[REQUEST_URI] I get the URL the user placed on the browser, /web3/ instead of /web2/ .

Is there any way .htaccess can also "fake" the path that is sent to the PHP var? (I was told this would be hard or even impossible.)

Thank you.

Answer 1

If you have mod_proxy loaded, you could internally proxy the request. That will change the REQUEST_URI server variable, but it's sort of a round about way to do it. Would be far more efficient if it all happened in the php scripts.

RewriteRule ^web3/?$ /web2/ [L,NC,P]
RewriteRule ^web3/(.+)$ /web2/$1 [L,NC,P]

Just need to add the P flag to the square brackets.