mod_rewrite with external redirect and internal re

Question

I'm trying to use mod_rewrite to redirect certain pages to use SSL. For that I have:

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/login(\.php)?$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/contact-us(\.php)?$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\..*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^dev\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/login(\.php)?$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/contact-us(\.php)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.php$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This works fine, and does exactly what I want it to do.

Later in my .htacess I have a:

RewriteRule ^members/(.+)/change-password$ members/.change-password.php?item=$1 [NC,QSA,L]

So if a URL appears as, for example:

http://www.example.com/members/foo-bar/change-password

Internally it would be processed as:

/members/.change-password.php?item=foo-bar

Again, this works fine and is doing what I want it too.

What I now need to do is include this in my original SSL redirect logic to ensure that any change password requests are redirected to the same URL but over https instead. I've tried:

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/login(\.php)?$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/contact-us(\.php)?$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\..*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/members/.+/change-password [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^dev\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/login(\.php)?$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/contact-us(\.php)?$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/members/.+/change-password [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.php$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

But this doesn't work - I just get the page delivered over http. Changing the .+ to .* appears to put me into a permanent redirect loop.

I'm guessing this is because of the internal rewrite but no matter what I try I can't seem to resolve it.

Can anyone please advise?

Thanks,

Adam M.

Answer 1

A further review of the mod_rewrite documentation led me to a bit I'd missed specific to its usage in .htaccess files. Basically the [L] flag doesn't actually indicate last as per the norm. Instead you need to use the [END] flag (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/flags.html#flag_l refers).

Of course that then led me to another issue - my hosting provider doesn't have an up-to-date installation of either Apache or mod_rewrite so the [END] flag triggered the ubiqitous HTTP 500 Internal Server Error.

So what to do? Well I went back to my original ruleset with the knowledge that [L] wasn't doing what I was expecting and spotted the error straight away - the %{REQUEST_URI} value had been updated by the internal rewrite:

RewriteRule ^members/(.+)/change-password$ members/.change-password.php?url-slug=$1 [NC,QSA,L]

Therefore changing my original redirection logic to exclude this resolved my issue:

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/login(\.php)?$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/contact-us(\.php)?$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\..*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/members/.+/change-password$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/members/\.change-password(\.php)? [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^dev\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/login(\.php)?$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/contact-us(\.php)?$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/members/.+/change-password$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)(\.php)?$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]