PHP — Using .htacess rewrite rules to hide folder name in URL

Question

I'm doing a small php personal project for fun and I need help with my rewrite rules. My goal is to hide completely a folder name in my URL.

Here's what I got already :

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/my-app/
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /my-app/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

This is working fine, I don't need to specify my-app folder in the URL but when I redirect to another page the folder name is displayed again. What can I do to specify that when my-app folder is requested, to hide it from the URL. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Try adding this rule to your htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \ /+my-app/
RewriteRule ^my-app/(.*)$ /$1 [L,R=301]

This will redirect any direct request for anything in /my-app/ to a URL with it removed.

Answer 2

This is a tested and working example that I have in my local app

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

# Add trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.|/$)
RewriteRule (.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/ [R=302,L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^qs
RewriteRule ^my-app(.*)$ $1 [R=302,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/my-app/
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ my-app/?qs=$1 [L,QSA]

This is how I redirect to

domain.com/subcat

When the url is

domain.com/my-app/subcat

I have the query string qs to avoid redirects like:

domain.com/?qs=subcat

To get the url just use $_GET var

var_dump($_GET);

Output

array (size=1)
  'qs' => string 'subcat' (length=3)

Replace R=302 with R=301 if it works for you

EDIT:

A better solution, without the query string qs

# Avoid redirect loop
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

# Add trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.|/$)
RewriteRule (.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/ [R=302,L]

RewriteRule ^my-app(.*)$ $1 [R=302,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/my-app/
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ my-app/$1 [L,QSA]