How to Redirect Dynamic Links to 404s?

[HoboTraveler]

Hi All,

I need to redirect links like these to a 404

.com/filename.php?page=2
.com/filenamefhj.php?page=5
.com/filenameasdf.php?page=6
.com/filenamedfg.php?page=8

The filename before the .php can be anything. They are all from the root.

Is it possible to create a Rewrite rule that would send them all to a 404? The page= is a constant.

TIA

[jdMorgan]

The key is to detect the query string (use RewriteCond) when a .php URL-path is requested, and *internally rewrite* that to a path *that you know does not exist*. You can make one up; For example, rewrite all such requests to "/non-existent-path.html" and then make sure you never actually create a file with that name.

Jim

[HoboTraveler]

Hello,

I created the following rule. This did not work.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+).php?page=$ /404.html [L]

Anything after page= is a number.

Any ideas on how to make this work?

Thanks

[g1smd]

No. Don't rewrite the request to your 404 error message page.

Doing that means the page is "found", and every URL request will return "200 OK". Every URL that "doesn't exist" will be indexed by search engines, because the "200 OK" statis is saying that the URL *does* exist. Since every URL also returns the exact same content, you have just caused an Infinite Duplicate Content problem for your site.

Rewrite the request to an internal file that does NOT exist. I use the literal path /this-file-does-not-exist for example. As the rewrite then goes to an internal file path that does not exist, the server itself sends the proper "404 Not Found" response back to the browser... because what was asked for does not exist on the server.

The

RewriteRule

also cannot see the query string. You need to test

%{QUERY_STRING}

with a preceding

RewriteCond

to do that.

[Caterham]

Drop the substitution (via - (dash) and use the

R=404

flag to issue a 404 if you're hosted on the recommended version of apache HTTP server (which is 2.2.x).

[HoboTraveler]

Hi All,

I tried the following query string and it did not work.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^page\=([^&]+)$
RewriteRule ^$ /404 [L]

Btw, the 404 file in the root does not exist.

[g1smd]

Your rule will only rewrite for example.com/?page=<variable> with no filename present before the question mark.

That's controlled by the

^$

which matches only / in the root.

If the request has more than one parameter then it will also not match, because the parameter must not contain an ampersand at all (according to your condition).

You don't need to escape the = sign.

[jdMorgan]

RewriteEngine on
#
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} &?page\=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^[^/.]+\.php$ /no-file-exists-here.xyz [L]

This rewrites only .php URL-paths requested from your root directory which have "page=" followed by a non-blank value in the query string to a filepath which does not exist, thus forcing a 404 error response. This should work on all versions of Apache that support mod_rewrite.

Jim

[HoboTraveler]

How do I add in the parameter that would add the filename?

All filenames end in a .php and they are all different from each other. All files are in the root.

[g1smd]

Unclear question.

Explain using example.com example URLs.

Add to what?

[HoboTraveler]

Thank You jdMorgan!

That works perfect!

[jdMorgan]

The code I posted does exactly what I wrote -- all .php URLs requested from root with page=<something> in the query string will return a 404. The rule won't affect any other URLs, .php URLs without that specific query string, or with that query string, but missing a value.

Please read the details of what I wrote -- I try very hard to be concise but thorough. Mod_rewrite demands complete attention to detail.

If you have a "list" of specific .php URL-paths that should return a 404, or if my detailed description of the rule's operation does not meet your requirements exactly, then please say so.

Jim

[jdMorgan]

Bit of cross-posting here, apparently.

Glad it worked for you.

Jim