HTTP code 403, access denied & Options -Indexes

Question

at "webmasters.stackexchange.com" I already found a similar topic: Stop directory listing using .htaccess and redirect to good error page

Options -Indexes
ErrorDocument 403 /path/to/403.html

However, now I want to distinguish between whether there was actaully a directory listing request issued OR if the user tried to access a protected area (through htaccess) unsuccessfully.

Both fire a 403, now how do I know which was the reason (the directory listing or the htaccess AuthName... thing) ?

Answer 1

A request for a directory listing will have a URL that ends in /.

So http://example.com/images/ will be a 403 because of the directory listing.

http://example.com/private/document.html will be a 403 because of your rule for the private directory.

Answer 2

Finally it worked by putting an additional line in the .htacces of the protected folder (call it private)

ErrorDocument 403 /forbidden-because-of-protection

and in the root's .htaccess I put the line like

ErrorDocument 403 /forbidden-because-of-directory-listing

So now when there is some request issued like /private/some/thing/bla the first .htaccess rule will be called - thus redirecting to /forbidden-because-of-protection otherwise like requesting a directory listing (thus not in /private) apache goes for the second rule.