1

I want to change some legacy URL's like this:

/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=600

to this:

/news/story/600/

This is what I have tried:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^name=News&file=([a-z_]+)&sid=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^modules\.php /news/story/%2/ [R=301,L]

However I still get 404's on the old URLs.

I do have some other rewrite rules working, so I am pretty sure mod_rewrite is enabled and functioning. These rules are in a httpd.conf file in a VirtualHost container.

I should also mention this is for a Python application (using Django) running with mod_wsgi. Should the rewrites happen before the URLs are passed to the wsgi application?

Any ideas? Thanks.

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2

I got it to work. It seems I had a couple of problems.

  1. I needed a forward slash on the pattern in RewriteRule; i.e.
    ^/modules.php instead of ^modules.php.

  2. I needed to prevent the query string from being appended to the new URL. This could cause recursion in some cases, or other strange things (400 bad request). A trailing ? did the trick.

I ended up with this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} sid=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^/modules\.php /news/story/%1/? [R=301,L]
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0

Where are these "other rewrite rules" located? In the same .conf or .htaccess file? I think you need Options +FollowSymlinks on the line just above RewriteEngine on.

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  • The working rewrite rules are right next to the ones that don't work, in a .conf file. They are in a VirtualHost container. – Brian Neal Feb 27 '11 at 2:58
  • Did you try what I mentioned about Options +FollowSymlinks? You could try putting the rewrite-rules in a .htaccess file. – user5688 Feb 27 '11 at 3:09
  • I did try the Options + FollowSymlinks, but it didn't work. – Brian Neal Feb 27 '11 at 3:21
  • I'm not using a .htaccess file; this is for a Python / WSGI application where the URL's don't really map to a directory (at least that is my understanding). But I don't know what I'm doing for sure. :) – Brian Neal Feb 27 '11 at 3:24
  • FollowSymLinks is not actually required when mod_rewrite is used directly in the server config / VirtualHost. – MrWhite Jan 23 '17 at 10:24

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