URL rewrite in .htaccess Symfony

Question

I'm using Symfony. I have the following files.

• /var/www/cheok/web/.htaccess
• /var/www/cheok/web/index.html

My original .htaccess content is

# Use the front controller as index file. It serves as a fallback solution when
# every other rewrite/redirect fails (e.g. in an aliased environment without
# mod_rewrite). Additionally, this reduces the matching process for the
# start page (path "/") because otherwise Apache will apply the rewriting rules
# to each configured DirectoryIndex file (e.g. index.php, index.html, index.pl).
DirectoryIndex app.php

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On

    # Determine the RewriteBase automatically and set it as environment variable.
    # If you are using Apache aliases to do mass virtual hosting or installed the
    # project in a subdirectory, the base path will be prepended to allow proper
    # resolution of the app.php file and to redirect to the correct URI. It will
    # work in environments without path prefix as well, providing a safe, one-size
    # fits all solution. But as you do not need it in this case, you can comment
    # the following 2 lines to eliminate the overhead.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}::$1 ^(/.+)/(.*)::\2$
    RewriteRule ^(.*) - [E=BASE:%1]

    # Redirect to URI without front controller to prevent duplicate content
    # (with and without `/app.php`). Only do this redirect on the initial
    # rewrite by Apache and not on subsequent cycles. Otherwise we would get an
    # endless redirect loop (request -> rewrite to front controller ->
    # redirect -> request -> ...).
    # So in case you get a "too many redirects" error or you always get redirected
    # to the start page because your Apache does not expose the REDIRECT_STATUS
    # environment variable, you have 2 choices:
    # - disable this feature by commenting the following 2 lines or
    # - use Apache >= 2.3.9 and replace all L flags by END flags and remove the
    #   following RewriteCond (best solution)
    RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
    RewriteRule ^app\.php(/(.*)|$) %{ENV:BASE}/$2 [R=301,L]

    # If the requested filename exists, simply serve it.
    # We only want to let Apache serve files and not directories.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
    RewriteRule .? - [L]

    # Rewrite all other queries to the front controller.
    RewriteRule .? %{ENV:BASE}/app.php [L]
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
    <IfModule mod_alias.c>
        # When mod_rewrite is not available, we instruct a temporary redirect of
        # the start page to the front controller explicitly so that the website
        # and the generated links can still be used.
        RedirectMatch 302 ^/$ /app.php/
        # RedirectTemp cannot be used instead
    </IfModule>
</IfModule>

I wish, when user provide URL

http://myserver.com/123/456

the URL will be rewrite to

http://myserver.com/index.html#123/456

Hence, I modify the original .htaccess to the following

DirectoryIndex app.php

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On

    RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)$ /index.html#$1/$2 [R=301,NC,L,NE]

    ...

• R=301 flag tells change the displayed URL at browser.
• NE flag tells mod_rewrite not to encode the URI.

However, it doesn't work as expected. URL rewrite doesn't work

http://myserver.com/123/456 - The server returned a "404 Not Found". http://myserver.com/index.html#123/456 - (Works fine still)

Is there anything I can try out, to figure out why the URL rewrite doesn't work?

Note, it once work without using Symfony.

hashtag in apache .htaccess

Also, in my /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, it looks like... I'm not sure whether it matters.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName myserver.com
    #ServerAlias domain.com.localhost
    #ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    #ServerPath /api/
    DocumentRoot /var/www/cheok/web
    <Directory /var/www/cheok/web/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
        <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
            RewriteEngine On
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /app.php [QSA,L]
        </IfModule>
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Answer 1

Since you're forwarding everything to app.php in Apache config you need to add this 301 rule there itself:

<Directory /var/www/cheok/web/>
    Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        RewriteEngine On

        RewriteRule ^/?([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ /index.html#$1/$2 [R=301,L,NE]

        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /app.php [L]
    </IfModule>
</Directory>