Rewriting without .htaccess

1

If you don’t want to use .htaccess, you’ll discover that things aren’t working anywhere near as well as you expected.

Here’s what you would EXPECT to work (Ubuntu 16.04 example, YMMV):

root@api:~# cat /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/001-api.example.com.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName api.example.com
  ServerAdmin user@example.com
  DocumentRoot /usr/local/api/website
  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
  <Directory /usr/local/api/website>
    Require all granted
  </Directory>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule ^ /index.php [QSA,L]
</VirtualHost>

Unfortunately, when you do that, everything 404’s, because, Apache is now returning a correct SCRIPT_NAME, which is also the same as REQUEST_URI, which is then deleted from itself and… everything 404s.

This has been an issue for a while, and isn’t thought of being a bug, and much Googling hasn’t turned up this simple answer, so, here it is:

$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] = "";

That’s it. Add that to the start of your index.php, and it fixes all your problems, without needing to turn on AllowOverrides (which a lot of people - including myself - don’t like doing at all!).

Enjoy!

1 Like
2

@xrobau You might also consider making a PR to the Slim Docs to assist others. Perhaps just a short … “if you don’t want to use .htaccess you can add the following to your VirtualHost config which will…”

3

I personally think it’s a bug. If SCRIPT_NAME and REQUEST_URI are the same, it shouldn’t be trying to delete one from the other, because that’s 100% broken and will never work.

But when I was trying to track this down, several times I’ve found people adamantly stating that it’s NOT a bug.