.htaccess url-rewrite if file not exists

Question

I must do a little trick for a site! The idea is:

if a file for a required url exists then I go to that url, doing nothing more;
if a file for a required url not exists, I must go to a file.php and than do something, but NOT changing the url!

example:

www.mysite.com/page1.htm -> exists -> go to file page1.htm

www.mysite.com/page2.htm -> NOT exists -> go to file default.php but with url "www.mysite.com/page2.htm"

It's possible to do this all by .htaccess?

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score 81 · Accepted Answer · edited May 21 '11 at 20:10

81

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^.*$ /default.php [L]

edited May 21 '11 at 20:10

Wander Nauta

answered Mar 29 '11 at 08:59

user237419

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 21 '15 at 17:18

10

It is not mentioned here but FallbackResource is the new recommended way of handling not-found (404) URLs. Example:

FallbackResource /not-404.php

From Apache manual:

Use this to set a handler for any URL that doesn't map to anything in your filesystem, and would otherwise return HTTP 404 (Not Found).

answered Jul 21 '15 at 17:18

anubhava

Important to note, I have found that this can break some server side processed REST-style URLs, like: `http://example.com/app.php/some/resource`. – Resist Design Jul 25 '15 at 00:28
That's not correct. Behavior of `FallbackResource` will be same as `ErrorDocument`. If `PATH_INFO` is enabled then `/app.php/some/resource` works flawlessly and I've tested it on my Apache. – anubhava Jul 25 '15 at 07:29

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered May 22 '15 at 08:38

5

Implement a 404 error rule. Doesn't require mod_rewrite:

ErrorDocument 404 /default.php

answered May 22 '15 at 08:38

Vladimir

This is also great if you want to use an HTML5 fallback without messing up rest style calls to php like `http://example.com/app.php/some/resource`. – Resist Design Jul 21 '15 at 05:55
I actually switched to this and it worked even better! – Resist Design Jul 21 '15 at 05:56
2

This might NOT be what you want. This will send a HTTP 404 status (file not found) header back to the browser (and to Google). So only use it for a useful 'file not found' page. – Andrew Murphy Feb 27 '17 at 09:53

3 Answers3