nullbit
Feb 23rd 2005, 7:28 am
I found this interesting (from apache's mod_rewrite engine manual):
External Rewriting Engine
Description:
A FAQ: How can we solve the FOO/BAR/QUUX/etc. problem? There seems no solution by the use of mod_rewrite...
Solution:
Use an external rewrite map, i.e. a program which acts like a rewrite map. It is run once on startup of Apache receives the requested URLs on STDIN and has to put the resulting (usually rewritten) URL on STDOUT (same order!).
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap quux-map prg:/path/to/map.quux.pl
RewriteRule ^/~quux/(.*)$ /~quux/${quux-map:$1}
#!/path/to/perl
# disable buffered I/O which would lead
# to deadloops for the Apache server
$| = 1;
# read URLs one per line from stdin and
# generate substitution URL on stdout
while (<>) {
s|^foo/|bar/|;
print $_;
}
This is a demonstration-only example and just rewrites all URLs /~quux/foo/... to /~quux/bar/.... Actually you can program whatever you like. But notice that while such maps can be used also by an average user, only the system administrator can define it.
So basically, you can use external scripts in whatever language you prefer to help rewrite your URLs, which is good for more complex URL rewriting scenarios, when you haven't got the time to learn how to do everything natively using the module.
External Rewriting Engine
Description:
A FAQ: How can we solve the FOO/BAR/QUUX/etc. problem? There seems no solution by the use of mod_rewrite...
Solution:
Use an external rewrite map, i.e. a program which acts like a rewrite map. It is run once on startup of Apache receives the requested URLs on STDIN and has to put the resulting (usually rewritten) URL on STDOUT (same order!).
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap quux-map prg:/path/to/map.quux.pl
RewriteRule ^/~quux/(.*)$ /~quux/${quux-map:$1}
#!/path/to/perl
# disable buffered I/O which would lead
# to deadloops for the Apache server
$| = 1;
# read URLs one per line from stdin and
# generate substitution URL on stdout
while (<>) {
s|^foo/|bar/|;
print $_;
}
This is a demonstration-only example and just rewrites all URLs /~quux/foo/... to /~quux/bar/.... Actually you can program whatever you like. But notice that while such maps can be used also by an average user, only the system administrator can define it.
So basically, you can use external scripts in whatever language you prefer to help rewrite your URLs, which is good for more complex URL rewriting scenarios, when you haven't got the time to learn how to do everything natively using the module.