I have this rule on my .htaccess that doesn't work as I would expect:
RewriteRule ^/rg$ /download/file_1.pdf [NC,L]
I would like to redirect all the requests from www.example.com/rg to download this file: www.example.com/download/file_1.pdf but so far nothing happens...
Am I missing something?
In .htaccess the URL-path that is matched by the RewriteRule pattern does not start with a slash. So, the regex should be ^rg$, not ^/rg$. In other words:
RewriteRule ^rg$ /download/file_1.pdf [NC,L]
Specifically, the directory-prefix that leads to the .htaccess file is first removed from the requested URL-path before the match occurs. This directory-prefix always ends with a slash, so the URL-path never starts with a slash.
This contrasts to when the directive is used in a server (or virtualhost) context, when you do need the slash prefix, since it matches the full URL-path (there is no directory-prefix in a server context).
^rg$ actually matches the requested URL /rg (exactly). This is unique to mod_rewrite (in a directory/.htaccess context). By contrast, the mod_alias directives Redirect and RedirectMatch would require you to match against the slash prefix (ie. the full URL-path).