Edit .htaccess with PHP

Question

I have a .htaccess that maps a domain to a folder.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# redirect mapped domain
ReWriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} joshblease.uk.to
ReWriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !gme-index/
ReWriteRule ^(.*)$ gme-index/$1 [L]

Is there any way to edit/add extra domain maps to the file using PHP?

Simply, I want to get the contents of the .htaccess file and add to them using a PHP script.

Answer 1

As suggested in one of the comments above it is better to use RewriteMap for your case here rather than trying to edit .htaccess from PHP code directly. Here is a sample how to use it:

1. Add following line to your httpd.conf file:

    RewriteMap domainMap txt://path/to/domain-dir.txt 

2. Create a text file as /path/to/domain-dir.txt like this:

    sub1 /subdir1 sub2 /foodir2 foo /bar 

3. Add these line in your .htaccess file:

    Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)\\.domain\\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^$ ${domainMap:%1} [L,R] 

Effectively all this means is to have these redirects in place:

• sub1.domain.com/ => sub1.domain.com/subdir1
• sub2.domain.com/ => sub2.domain.com/foodir2
• foo.domain.com/ => foo.domain.com/bar

Advantage: With this setup in place, you can edit or recreate the file /path/to/domain-dir.txt as much as you want from your php code without opening a huge security hole be allowing php code o edit .htaccess directly.

Answer 2

This could work for your situation:

Ammend the .htaccess to look the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# redirect mapped domain
ReWriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} joshblease.uk.to
ReWriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !gme-index/
ReWriteRule ^(.*)$ gme-index/$1 [L]

###CUSTOM RULES###

php script assuming $rules holds the new generated rules to be ammended;

$htaccess = file_get_contents('/path/to/.htaccess');
$htaccess = str_replace('###CUSTOM RULES###', $rules."\n###CUSTOM RULES###", $htaccess);
file_put_contents('/path/to/.htaccess', $htaccess);

example above is theory and has not been tested, would be dependant upon .htaccess privledges and permissions of the script.

Answer 3

You could use the following htaccess to map any domain other than maindomain.com to a folder that has the same name as the domain-name.

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
ReWriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !maindomain.com
ReWriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} (.*)
ReWriteRule ^(.*)$ %1/$1 [L]

alternatively; to map the folder to the domainname without the ltd.

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
ReWriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !maindomain.com
ReWriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^\.]*)
ReWriteRule ^(.*)$ %1/$1 [L]

Not exactly what you wanted, but it might work for you, and doesn't need any php.