Apache redirect rule for the same url

Question

I am trying to write a RewriteCond and RewriteRule to the following.

If someone tries to access forex.com or forexample.com they should both redirect to

forexample.com/abcd/xyz/

The below rewrite condition works for forex.com

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^forex\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ [R,NE]

But when I add another rule like below it goes to a redirect loop

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^forexample\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ [R,NE]

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

This works because forex.com and forexample.com are different domains:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^forex\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ [R,NE]

But in the second case, I believe the issue is that the rule as you have set will redirect anything on https://forexample.com/ to https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ even if it is already in https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ :

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^forexample\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ [R,NE]

So do a check for the REQUEST_URI not being abcd/xyz/ and you should be good to go:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^forexample\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(abcd/xyz/.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ [L,R,NE]

But then looking this over, the first HTTP_HOST rule makes little sense. Perhaps you want it to just be this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(abcd/xyz/.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://forexample.com/abcd/xyz/ [L,R,NE]

A good way to debug stuff like this is to use curl -I from the command line. That command will show you the exact HTTP headers you getting based on a rule or request. So use it like this; using my MAMP test environment for an example:

curl -I http://localhost:8888

And the output for me would be:

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 02:19:39 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.23 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.23 OpenSSL/0.9.8y DAV/2 PHP/5.4.10
Location: http://localhost:8888/abcd/xyz/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Note the HTTP/1.1 302 Found which means it's a temporary redirect and the Location: http://localhost:8888/abcd/xyz/ which indicates where the rule is rewriting the call to http://localhost:8888 as.