htaccess and apache alias to rewrite directory above document root

Question

The current directory set up is as follows:

website
    - web
        index.php
    - base
        file.php
    .htaccess

The document root is the 'web' directory. The index.php file has a require script to get 'file.php'.

require(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/base/file.php');

What I am trying to achieve is that if the 'base' directory does not exist, the .htaccess file will rewrite the 'base' files to a another location on the local machine. At the moment I have set up an Alias in httpd.conf:

Alias /basefiles "/Users/Guest/base"

<Directory "/Users/Guest/base">
    Options +Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

and this in the .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond ${REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond ${REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^base/(.*)$ /basefiles/$1 [L]

At the moment this is not working at all. Anyone any ideas please?

Answer 1

PHP's require has nothing to do with how files are accessed from the web.

To "rewrite" PHP file locations, you might check explicitly in your PHP script, if the directory and file exists and act accordingly.

Another strategy might set the include_path ( set_include_path ) to something like /.../base:/.../basefiles and then just

require('file.php');