Redirect and Rewrite Infinite loop

[wakasenshi]

I am new to .htaccess files so I wanted to get a static version working before I try to tackle a dynamic one.

If someone requests mydomain.com/ugly.html
I want the URL to be rewritten to mydomain.com/pretty.html
But I want it to actually show the ugly.html file

So whether they type in mydomain.com/ugly.html
or they type in mydomain.com/pretty.html
they get the ugly.html
but the URL shows mydomain.com/pretty.html

so far I have got:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^ugly\.html$ pretty.html [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^pretty\.html$ ugly.html [L]

This results in an infinite loop.

I don't know how to fix this.

[g1smd]

The redirect needs to additionally specify the domain name in the redirect target.

The redirect also needs a preceding RewriteCond checking THE_REQUEST so that only external direct client requests are redirected.

Otherwise you've almost nailed the code you need. This redirect/rewrite problem is dicussed many times each month, so there's a lot of prior example code here.

Also, do

# comment

your code so you know what each chunk does.

[wakasenshi]

Thanks for replying so quickly

The redirect needs to additionally specify the domain name in the redirect target.

Doesn't this make it so I don't need to specify the domain name?

RewriteBase /

The redirect also needs a preceding RewriteCond checking THE_REQUEST so that only external direct client requests are redirected.

I figured I needed to have a RewriteCond statement but I have searched the web for days to understand how and when to use them but I have yet to find a tutorial that explains it in terms I can understand.

It may be a lot to ask but could you explain how to use this?

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST}

Thanks for your patience.

[jdMorgan]

RewriteBase has nothing to do with domains, it has to do with server-internal filepaths -- see the mod_rewrite docs.

Options +FollowSymLinks
#
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
#
# Externally redirect direct client request for 'ugly.html' filepath to /pretty.html URL
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\ /ugly\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^ugly\.html$ http://www.example.com/pretty.html [R=301,L]
#
# Internally rewrite requests for /pretty.html URL-path to /ugly.html filepath
RewriteRule ^pretty\.html$ /ugly.html [L]

THE_REQUEST is the original client request, exactly as logged in your raw server access log. Its use here prevents recursion after the second rule has already rewritten the requested /pretty.html URL-path to the /ugly.html filepath, and thus stops the looping.

Perhaps what isn't obvious is that mod_rewrite in the .htaccess context is recursive: mod_rewrite processing is re-started each time a rule matches and is invoked, and this continues until a pass is made through all rules without any further matches and invocations.

Jim

[edited by: jdMorgan at 3:13 pm (utc) on Jun 28, 2010]

[wakasenshi]

Thank you for your help