Apache rewrite rule which works with or without a trailing slash

Question

I'm trying to redirect a series of static URLs, and I want it to work whether or not the trailing slash is present:

/foo/bar  --->  /tacos
/foo/bar/  -->  /tacos

I've tried the following, and all sorts of variations, but I always get a match only with the trailing slash present:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar?/$ http://url.com/tacos
RewriteRule ^foo/bar(?/)$ http://url.com/tacos
RewriteRule ^foo/bar*/$ http://url.com/tacos
RewriteRule ^foo/bar(*/)$ http://url.com/tacos

I feel like I'm missing something obvious. Help?

Ran into the same issue. I noticed that if I had the folder existing (but empty) then both would work with "RewriteRule ^old/(.*) http://test.com/new/$1 [R=301,L]" logic (where test.com/old/ existed). — Xonatron, Jan 07 '19 at 18:33

score 46 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 25 '19 at 10:20

46

Other than in EBNF or ABNF, a quantifier in regular expressions refers the preceding expression and not the following expression.

So:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar/?$ http://url.com/tacos

edited Apr 25 '19 at 10:20

Community

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answered Oct 01 '10 at 21:57

Gumbo

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The question mark says "I'll have 0 or 1 trailing slashes." You go to a restaurant and say "I'll have a taco?" You're really saying "I'll have 0 or 1 tacos." – bobobobo Dec 22 '10 at 22:57

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '11 at 20:32

14

If you want to match foo/bar regardless of whether it's followed by another portion of path, you can say:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar(/.*|$) http://url.com/tacos

This will match any of the following:

foo/bar
foo/bar/
foo/bar/baz

It means: match either a) a slash followed by 0 or more characters, or b) the end of the string.

On the other hand, these might be undesirable:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar/? http://url.com/tacos     # This also matches foo/barb
RewriteRule ^foo/bar/?$ http://url.com/tacos    # This will not match foo/bar/baz

answered Jun 04 '11 at 20:32

fulv

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I'd say you can omit the `.*` here: `RewriteRule ^foo/bar(/|$) http://url.com/tacos`. That only makes sense if you actually use what you capture there. – arkascha May 25 '18 at 16:12
@arkascha True. – fulv May 25 '18 at 20:54

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 01 '10 at 21:57

3

Try

RewriteRule ^foo/bar/?$ http://url.com/tacos

answered Oct 01 '10 at 21:57

chigley

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 22 '18 at 03:59

1

This also works: RedirectMatch 301 /foo/bar(/.*|$) http://url.com/tacos

answered May 22 '18 at 03:59

CragMonkey

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Apache rewrite rule which works with or without a trailing slash

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