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23 <manualpage metafile="flags.xml.meta">
24 <parentdocument href="./">Rewrite</parentdocument>
26 <title>RewriteRule Flags</title>
29 <p>This document discusses the flags which are available to the
30 <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> directive,
31 providing detailed explanations and examples.</p>
34 <seealso><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">Module documentation</a></seealso>
35 <seealso><a href="intro.html">mod_rewrite introduction</a></seealso>
36 <seealso><a href="remapping.html">Redirection and remapping</a></seealso>
37 <seealso><a href="access.html">Controlling access</a></seealso>
38 <seealso><a href="vhosts.html">Virtual hosts</a></seealso>
39 <seealso><a href="proxy.html">Proxying</a></seealso>
40 <seealso><a href="rewritemap.html">Using RewriteMap</a></seealso>
41 <seealso><a href="advanced.html">Advanced techniques</a></seealso>
42 <seealso><a href="avoid.html">When not to use mod_rewrite</a></seealso>
44 <section id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
45 <p>A <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> can have
46 its behavior modified by one or more flags. Flags are included in
47 square brackets at the end of the rule, and multiple flags are separated
49 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule pattern target [Flag1,Flag2,Flag3]</highlight>
51 <p>Each flag (with a few exceptions) has a short form, such as
52 <code>CO</code>, as well as a longer form, such as <code>cookie</code>.
53 While it is most common to use
54 the short form, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the
55 long form, so that you remember what each flag is supposed to do.
56 Some flags take one or more arguments. Flags are not case sensitive.</p>
58 <p>Flags that alter metadata associated with the request (T=, H=, E=)
59 have no affect in per-directory and htaccess context, when a substitution
60 (other than '-') is performed during the same round of rewrite processing.
63 <p>Presented here are each of the available flags, along with an example
64 of how you might use them.</p>
67 <section id="flag_b"><title>B (escape backreferences)</title>
68 <p>The [B] flag instructs <directive
69 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> to escape non-alphanumeric
70 characters before applying the transformation.</p>
71 <p>In 2.4.10 and later, you can limit the escaping to specific characters
72 in backreferences by listing them: <code>[B=#?;]</code> </p>
74 <section id="flag_bnp"><title>BNP|backrefnoplus (don't escape space to +)</title>
75 <p>The [BNP] flag instructs <directive
76 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> to escape the space character
77 in a backreference to %20 rather than '+'. Useful when the backreference
78 will be used in the path component rather than the query string.
80 <p><code>mod_rewrite</code> has to unescape URLs before mapping them,
81 so backreferences are unescaped at the time they are applied.
82 Using the B flag, non-alphanumeric characters in backreferences
83 will be escaped. For example, consider the rule:</p>
85 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule ^search/(.*)$ /search.php?term=$1</highlight>
87 <p>Given a search term of 'x & y/z', a browser will encode it as
88 'x%20%26%20y%2Fz', making the request 'search/x%20%26%20y%2Fz'. Without the B
89 flag, this rewrite rule will map to 'search.php?term=x & y/z', which
90 isn't a valid URL, and so would be encoded as
91 <code>search.php?term=x%20&y%2Fz=</code>, which is not what was intended.</p>
93 <p>With the B flag set on this same rule, the parameters are re-encoded
94 before being passed on to the output URL, resulting in a correct mapping to
95 <code>/search.php?term=x%20%26%20y%2Fz</code>.</p>
97 <p>Note that you may also need to set <directive
98 module="core">AllowEncodedSlashes</directive> to <code>On</code> to get this
99 particular example to work, as httpd does not allow encoded slashes in URLs, and
100 returns a 404 if it sees one.</p>
102 <p>This escaping is particularly necessary in a proxy situation,
103 when the backend may break if presented with an unescaped URL.</p>
105 <p>An alternative to this flag is using a <directive module="mod_rewrite"
106 >RewriteCond</directive> to capture against %{THE_REQUEST} which will capture
107 strings in the encoded form.</p>
110 <section id="flag_c"><title>C|chain</title>
111 <p>The [C] or [chain] flag indicates that the <directive
112 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> is chained to the next
113 rule. That is, if the rule matches, then it is processed as usual and
114 control moves on to the next rule. However, if it does not match, then
115 the next rule, and any other rules that are chained together, are
120 <section id="flag_co"><title>CO|cookie</title>
121 <p>The [CO], or [cookie] flag, allows you to set a cookie when a
122 particular <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive>
123 matches. The argument consists of three required fields and four optional
126 <p>The full syntax for the flag, including all attributes, is as
130 [CO=NAME:VALUE:DOMAIN:lifetime:path:secure:httponly]
133 <p>You must declare a name, a value, and a domain for the cookie to be set.</p>
137 <dd>The domain for which you want the cookie to be valid. This may be a
138 hostname, such as <code>www.example.com</code>, or it may be a domain,
139 such as <code>.example.com</code>. It must be at least two parts
140 separated by a dot. That is, it may not be merely <code>.com</code> or
141 <code>.net</code>. Cookies of that kind are forbidden by the cookie
145 <p>You may optionally also set the following values:</p>
149 <dd>The time for which the cookie will persist, in minutes.</dd>
150 <dd>A value of 0 indicates that the cookie will persist only for the
151 current browser session. This is the default value if none is
155 <dd>The path, on the current website, for which the cookie is valid,
156 such as <code>/customers/</code> or <code>/files/download/</code>.</dd>
157 <dd>By default, this is set to <code>/</code> - that is, the entire
161 <dd>If set to <code>secure</code>, <code>true</code>, or <code>1</code>,
162 the cookie will only be permitted to be translated via secure (https)
166 <dd>If set to <code>HttpOnly</code>, <code>true</code>, or
167 <code>1</code>, the cookie will have the <code>HttpOnly</code> flag set,
168 which means that the cookie is inaccessible to JavaScript code on
169 browsers that support this feature.</dd>
172 <p>Consider this example:</p>
174 <highlight language="config">
176 RewriteRule ^/index\.html - [CO=frontdoor:yes:.example.com:1440:/]
179 <p>In the example give, the rule doesn't rewrite the request.
180 The "-" rewrite target tells mod_rewrite to pass the request
181 through unchanged. Instead, it sets a cookie
182 called 'frontdoor' to a value of 'yes'. The cookie is valid for any host
183 in the <code>.example.com</code> domain. It is set to expire in 1440
184 minutes (24 hours) and is returned for all URIs.</p>
188 <section id="flag_dpi"><title>DPI|discardpath</title>
189 <p>The DPI flag causes the PATH_INFO portion of the rewritten URI to be
191 <p>This flag is available in version 2.2.12 and later.</p>
192 <p>In per-directory context, the URI each <directive>RewriteRule</directive>
193 compares against is the concatenation of the current values of the URI
196 <p>The current URI can be the initial URI as requested by the client, the
197 result of a previous round of mod_rewrite processing, or the result of
198 a prior rule in the current round of mod_rewrite processing.</p>
200 <p>In contrast, the PATH_INFO that is appended to the URI before each
201 rule reflects only the value of PATH_INFO before this round of
202 mod_rewrite processing. As a consequence, if large portions
203 of the URI are matched and copied into a substitution in multiple
204 <directive>RewriteRule</directive> directives, without regard for
205 which parts of the URI came from the current PATH_INFO, the final
206 URI may have multiple copies of PATH_INFO appended to it.</p>
208 <p>Use this flag on any substitution where the PATH_INFO that resulted
209 from the previous mapping of this request to the filesystem is not of
210 interest. This flag permanently forgets the PATH_INFO established
211 before this round of mod_rewrite processing began. PATH_INFO will
212 not be recalculated until the current round of mod_rewrite processing
213 completes. Subsequent rules during this round of processing will see
214 only the direct result of substitutions, without any PATH_INFO
218 <section id="flag_e"><title>E|env</title>
219 <p>With the [E], or [env] flag, you can set the value of an environment
220 variable. Note that some environment variables may be set after the rule
221 is run, thus unsetting what you have set. See <a href="../env.html">the
222 Environment Variables document</a> for more details on how Environment
225 <p>The full syntax for this flag is:</p>
232 <p><code>VAL</code> may contain backreferences (<code>$N</code> or
233 <code>%N</code>) which are expanded.</p>
235 <p>Using the short form</p>
241 <p>you can set the environment variable named <code>VAR</code> to an
250 <p>allows to unset a previously set environment variable named
251 <code>VAR</code>.</p>
253 <p>Environment variables can then be used in a variety of
254 contexts, including CGI programs, other RewriteRule directives, or
255 CustomLog directives.</p>
257 <p>The following example sets an environment variable called 'image' to a
258 value of '1' if the requested URI is an image file. Then, that
259 environment variable is used to exclude those requests from the access
262 <highlight language="config">
263 RewriteRule \.(png|gif|jpg)$ - [E=image:1]
264 CustomLog logs/access_log combined env=!image
267 <p>Note that this same effect can be obtained using <directive
268 module="mod_setenvif">SetEnvIf</directive>. This technique is offered as
269 an example, not as a recommendation.</p>
272 <section id="flag_end"><title>END</title>
273 <p>Using the [END] flag terminates not only the current round of rewrite
274 processing (like [L]) but also prevents any subsequent rewrite
275 processing from occurring in per-directory (htaccess) context.</p>
277 <p>This does not apply to new requests resulting from external
281 <section id="flag_f"><title>F|forbidden</title>
282 <p>Using the [F] flag causes the server to return a 403 Forbidden status
283 code to the client. While the same behavior can be accomplished using
284 the <directive module="mod_access_compat">Deny</directive> directive, this
285 allows more flexibility in assigning a Forbidden status.</p>
287 <p>The following rule will forbid <code>.exe</code> files from being
288 downloaded from your server.</p>
290 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule \.exe - [F]</highlight>
292 <p>This example uses the "-" syntax for the rewrite target, which means
293 that the requested URI is not modified. There's no reason to rewrite to
294 another URI, if you're going to forbid the request.</p>
296 <p>When using [F], an [L] is implied - that is, the response is returned
297 immediately, and no further rules are evaluated.</p>
301 <section id="flag_g"><title>G|gone</title>
302 <p>The [G] flag forces the server to return a 410 Gone status with the
303 response. This indicates that a resource used to be available, but is no
304 longer available.</p>
306 <p>As with the [F] flag, you will typically use the "-" syntax for the
307 rewrite target when using the [G] flag:</p>
309 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule oldproduct - [G,NC]</highlight>
311 <p>When using [G], an [L] is implied - that is, the response is returned
312 immediately, and no further rules are evaluated.</p>
316 <section id="flag_h"><title>H|handler</title>
317 <p>Forces the resulting request to be handled with the specified
318 handler. For example, one might use this to force all files without a
319 file extension to be parsed by the php handler:</p>
321 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule !\. - [H=application/x-httpd-php]</highlight>
324 The regular expression above - <code>!\.</code> - will match any request
325 that does not contain the literal <code>.</code> character.
328 <p>This can be also used to force the handler based on some conditions.
329 For example, the following snippet used in per-server context allows
330 <code>.php</code> files to be <em>displayed</em> by <code>mod_php</code>
331 if they are requested with the <code>.phps</code> extension:</p>
333 <highlight language="config">
334 RewriteRule ^(/source/.+\.php)s$ $1 [H=application/x-httpd-php-source]
337 <p>The regular expression above - <code>^(/source/.+\.php)s$</code> - will
338 match any request that starts with <code>/source/</code> followed by 1 or
339 n characters followed by <code>.phps</code> literally. The backreference
340 $1 referrers to the captured match within parenthesis of the regular
344 <section id="flag_l"><title>L|last</title>
345 <p>The [L] flag causes <module>mod_rewrite</module> to stop processing
346 the rule set. In most contexts, this means that if the rule matches, no
347 further rules will be processed. This corresponds to the
348 <code>last</code> command in Perl, or the <code>break</code> command in
349 C. Use this flag to indicate that the current rule should be applied
350 immediately without considering further rules.</p>
352 <p>If you are using <directive
353 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> in either
354 <code>.htaccess</code> files or in
355 <directive type="section" module="core">Directory</directive> sections,
356 it is important to have some understanding of how the rules are
357 processed. The simplified form of this is that once the rules have been
358 processed, the rewritten request is handed back to the URL parsing
359 engine to do what it may with it. It is possible that as the rewritten
360 request is handled, the <code>.htaccess</code> file or
361 <directive type="section" module="core">Directory</directive> section
362 may be encountered again, and thus the ruleset may be run again from the
363 start. Most commonly this will happen if one of the rules causes a
364 redirect - either internal or external - causing the request process to
367 <p>It is therefore important, if you are using <directive
368 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> directives in one of these
369 contexts, that you take explicit steps to avoid rules looping, and not
370 count solely on the [L] flag to terminate execution of a series of
371 rules, as shown below.</p>
373 <p> An alternative flag, [END], can be used to terminate not only the
374 current round of rewrite processing but prevent any subsequent
375 rewrite processing from occurring in per-directory (htaccess)
376 context. This does not apply to new requests resulting from external
379 <p>The example given here will rewrite any request to
380 <code>index.php</code>, giving the original request as a query string
381 argument to <code>index.php</code>, however, the <directive
382 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteCond</directive> ensures that if the request
383 is already for <code>index.php</code>, the <directive
384 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> will be skipped.</p>
386 <highlight language="config">
388 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/index.php
389 RewriteRule ^(.*) /index.php?req=$1 [L,PT]
393 <section id="flag_n"><title>N|next</title>
395 The [N] flag causes the ruleset to start over again from the top, using
396 the result of the ruleset so far as a starting point. Use
397 with extreme caution, as it may result in loop.
400 The [Next] flag could be used, for example, if you wished to replace a
401 certain string or letter repeatedly in a request. The example shown here
402 will replace A with B everywhere in a request, and will continue doing
403 so until there are no more As to be replaced.
405 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule (.*)A(.*) $1B$2 [N]</highlight>
406 <p>You can think of this as a <code>while</code> loop: While this
407 pattern still matches (i.e., while the URI still contains an
408 <code>A</code>), perform this substitution (i.e., replace the
409 <code>A</code> with a <code>B</code>).</p>
411 <p>In 2.5.0 and later, this module returns an error after 10,000 iterations to
412 protect against unintended looping. An alternative maximum number of
413 iterations can be specified by adding to the N flag. </p>
414 <highlight language="config">
415 # Be willing to replace 1 character in each pass of the loop
416 RewriteRule (.+)[><;]$ $1 [N=32000]
417 # ... or, give up if after 10 loops
418 RewriteRule (.+)[><;]$ $1 [N=10]
423 <section id="flag_nc"><title>NC|nocase</title>
424 <p>Use of the [NC] flag causes the <directive
425 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> to be matched in a
426 case-insensitive manner. That is, it doesn't care whether letters appear
427 as upper-case or lower-case in the matched URI.</p>
429 <p>In the example below, any request for an image file will be proxied
430 to your dedicated image server. The match is case-insensitive, so that
431 <code>.jpg</code> and <code>.JPG</code> files are both acceptable, for
434 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule (.*\.(jpg|gif|png))$ http://images.example.com$1 [P,NC]</highlight>
437 <section id="flag_ne"><title>NE|noescape</title>
438 <p>By default, special characters, such as <code>&</code> and
439 <code>?</code>, for example, will be converted to their hexcode
440 equivalent. Using the [NE] flag prevents that from happening.
443 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule ^/anchor/(.+) /bigpage.html#$1 [NE,R]</highlight>
446 The above example will redirect <code>/anchor/xyz</code> to
447 <code>/bigpage.html#xyz</code>. Omitting the [NE] will result in the #
448 being converted to its hexcode equivalent, <code>%23</code>, which will
449 then result in a 404 Not Found error condition.
454 <section id="flag_ns"><title>NS|nosubreq</title>
455 <p>Use of the [NS] flag prevents the rule from being used on
456 subrequests. For example, a page which is included using an SSI (Server
457 Side Include) is a subrequest, and you may want to avoid rewrites
458 happening on those subrequests. Also, when <module>mod_dir</module>
459 tries to find out information about possible directory default files
460 (such as <code>index.html</code> files), this is an internal
461 subrequest, and you often want to avoid rewrites on such subrequests.
462 On subrequests, it is not always useful, and can even cause errors, if
463 the complete set of rules are applied. Use this flag to exclude
464 problematic rules.</p>
466 <p>To decide whether or not to use this rule: if you prefix URLs with
467 CGI-scripts, to force them to be processed by the CGI-script, it's
468 likely that you will run into problems (or significant overhead)
469 on sub-requests. In these cases, use this flag.</p>
472 Images, javascript files, or css files, loaded as part of an HTML page,
473 are not subrequests - the browser requests them as separate HTTP
478 <section id="flag_p"><title>P|proxy</title>
479 <p>Use of the [P] flag causes the request to be handled by
480 <module>mod_proxy</module>, and handled via a proxy request. For
481 example, if you wanted all image requests to be handled by a back-end
482 image server, you might do something like the following:</p>
484 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule /(.*)\.(jpg|gif|png)$ http://images.example.com/$1.$2 [P]</highlight>
486 <p>Use of the [P] flag implies [L] - that is, the request is immediately
487 pushed through the proxy, and any following rules will not be
491 You must make sure that the substitution string is a valid URI
492 (typically starting with <code>http://</code><em>hostname</em>) which can be
493 handled by the <module>mod_proxy</module>. If not, you will get an
494 error from the proxy module. Use this flag to achieve a
495 more powerful implementation of the <directive
496 module="mod_proxy">ProxyPass</directive> directive,
497 to map remote content into the namespace of the local server.</p>
499 <note type="warning">
500 <title>Security Warning</title>
501 <p>Take care when constructing the target URL of the rule, considering
502 the security impact from allowing the client influence over the set of
503 URLs to which your server will act as a proxy. Ensure that the scheme
504 and hostname part of the URL is either fixed, or does not allow the
505 client undue influence.</p>
508 <note type="warning">
509 <title>Performance warning</title>
510 <p>Using this flag triggers the use of <module>mod_proxy</module>, without handling of persistent connections. This
511 means the performance of your proxy will be better if you set it up with <directive module="mod_proxy">ProxyPass</directive> or
512 <directive module="mod_proxy">ProxyPassMatch</directive></p>
513 <p>This is because this flag triggers the use of the default worker, which does not handle connection pooling.</p>
514 <p>Avoid using this flag and prefer those directives, whenever you can.</p>
517 <p>Note: <module>mod_proxy</module> must be enabled in order
518 to use this flag.</p>
522 <section id="flag_pt"><title>PT|passthrough</title>
525 The target (or substitution string) in a RewriteRule is assumed to be a
526 file path, by default. The use of the [PT] flag causes it to be treated
527 as a URI instead. That is to say, the
528 use of the [PT] flag causes the result of the <directive
529 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> to be passed back through
530 URL mapping, so that location-based mappings, such as <directive
531 module="mod_alias">Alias</directive>, <directive
532 module="mod_alias">Redirect</directive>, or <directive
533 module="mod_alias">ScriptAlias</directive>, for example, might have a
534 chance to take effect.
538 If, for example, you have an
539 <directive module="mod_alias">Alias</directive>
540 for /icons, and have a <directive
541 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> pointing there, you should
542 use the [PT] flag to ensure that the
543 <directive module="mod_alias">Alias</directive> is evaluated.
546 <highlight language="config">
547 Alias /icons /usr/local/apache/icons
548 RewriteRule /pics/(.+)\.jpg$ /icons/$1.gif [PT]
552 Omission of the [PT] flag in this case will cause the Alias to be
553 ignored, resulting in a 'File not found' error being returned.
556 <p>The <code>PT</code> flag implies the <code>L</code> flag:
557 rewriting will be stopped in order to pass the request to
558 the next phase of processing.</p>
560 <p>Note that the <code>PT</code> flag is implied in per-directory
562 <directive type="section" module="core">Directory</directive> sections
563 or in <code>.htaccess</code> files. The only way to circumvent that
564 is to rewrite to <code>-</code>.</p>
568 <section id="flag_qsa"><title>QSA|qsappend</title>
570 When the replacement URI contains a query string, the default behavior
571 of <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> is to discard
572 the existing query string, and replace it with the newly generated one.
573 Using the [QSA] flag causes the query strings to be combined.
576 <p>Consider the following rule:</p>
578 <highlight language="config">RewriteRule /pages/(.+) /page.php?page=$1 [QSA]</highlight>
580 <p>With the [QSA] flag, a request for <code>/pages/123?one=two</code> will be
581 mapped to <code>/page.php?page=123&one=two</code>. Without the [QSA]
582 flag, that same request will be mapped to
583 <code>/page.php?page=123</code> - that is, the existing query string
588 <section id="flag_qsd"><title>QSD|qsdiscard</title>
590 When the requested URI contains a query string, and the target URI does
591 not, the default behavior of <directive
592 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> is to copy that query
593 string to the target URI. Using the [QSD] flag causes the query string
597 <p>This flag is available in version 2.4.0 and later.</p>
600 Using [QSD] and [QSA] together will result in [QSD] taking precedence.
604 If the target URI has a query string, the default behavior will be
605 observed - that is, the original query string will be discarded and
606 replaced with the query string in the <code>RewriteRule</code> target
612 <section id="flag_r"><title>R|redirect</title>
614 Use of the [R] flag causes a HTTP redirect to be issued to the browser.
615 If a fully-qualified URL is specified (that is, including
616 <code>http://servername/</code>) then a redirect will be issued to that
617 location. Otherwise, the current protocol, servername, and port number
618 will be used to generate the URL sent with the redirect.
622 <em>Any</em> valid HTTP response status code may be specified,
623 using the syntax [R=305], with a 302 status code being used by
624 default if none is specified. The status code specified need not
625 necessarily be a redirect (3xx) status code. However,
626 if a status code is outside the redirect range (300-399) then the
627 substitution string is dropped entirely, and rewriting is stopped as if
628 the <code>L</code> were used.</p>
630 <p>In addition to response status codes, you may also specify redirect
631 status using their symbolic names: <code>temp</code> (default),
632 <code>permanent</code>, or <code>seeother</code>.</p>
635 You will almost always want to use [R] in conjunction with [L] (that is,
636 use [R,L]) because on its own, the [R] flag prepends
637 <code>http://thishost[:thisport]</code> to the URI, but then passes this
638 on to the next rule in the ruleset, which can often result in 'Invalid
639 URI in request' warnings.
644 <section id="flag_s"><title>S|skip</title>
645 <p>The [S] flag is used to skip rules that you don't want to run. The
646 syntax of the skip flag is [S=<em>N</em>], where <em>N</em> signifies
647 the number of rules to skip (provided the <directive module="mod_rewrite">
648 RewriteRule</directive> and any preceding <directive module="mod_rewrite">
649 RewriteCond</directive> directives match). This can be thought of as a
650 <code>goto</code> statement in your rewrite ruleset. In the following
651 example, we only want to run the <directive module="mod_rewrite">
652 RewriteRule</directive> if the requested URI doesn't correspond with an
655 <highlight language="config">
656 # Is the request for a non-existent file?
657 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
658 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
659 # If so, skip these two RewriteRules
660 RewriteRule .? - [S=2]
662 RewriteRule (.*\.gif) images.php?$1
663 RewriteRule (.*\.html) docs.php?$1
666 <p>This technique is useful because a <directive
667 module="mod_rewrite">RewriteCond</directive> only applies to the
668 <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> immediately
669 following it. Thus, if you want to make a <code>RewriteCond</code> apply
670 to several <code>RewriteRule</code>s, one possible technique is to
671 negate those conditions and add a <code>RewriteRule</code> with a [Skip] flag. You can
672 use this to make pseudo if-then-else constructs: The last rule of
673 the then-clause becomes <code>skip=N</code>, where N is the
674 number of rules in the else-clause:</p>
675 <highlight language="config">
676 # Does the file exist?
677 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
678 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
679 # Create an if-then-else construct by skipping 3 lines if we meant to go to the "else" stanza.
680 RewriteRule .? - [S=3]
682 # IF the file exists, then:
683 RewriteRule (.*\.gif) images.php?$1
684 RewriteRule (.*\.html) docs.php?$1
685 # Skip past the "else" stanza.
686 RewriteRule .? - [S=1]
688 RewriteRule (.*) 404.php?file=$1
692 <p>It is probably easier to accomplish this kind of configuration using
693 the <directive type="section">If</directive>, <directive
694 type="section">ElseIf</directive>, and <directive
695 type="section">Else</directive> directives instead.</p>
699 <section id="flag_t"><title>T|type</title>
700 <p>Sets the MIME type with which the resulting response will be
701 sent. This has the same effect as the <directive
702 module="mod_mime">AddType</directive> directive.</p>
704 <p>For example, you might use the following technique to serve Perl
705 source code as plain text, if requested in a particular way:</p>
707 <highlight language="config">
708 # Serve .pl files as plain text
709 RewriteRule \.pl$ - [T=text/plain]
712 <p>Or, perhaps, if you have a camera that produces jpeg images without
713 file extensions, you could force those images to be served with the
714 correct MIME type by virtue of their file names:</p>
716 <highlight language="config">
717 # Files with 'IMG' in the name are jpg images.
718 RewriteRule IMG - [T=image/jpg]
721 <p>Please note that this is a trivial example, and could be better done
722 using <directive type="section" module="core">FilesMatch</directive>
723 instead. Always consider the alternate
724 solutions to a problem before resorting to rewrite, which will
725 invariably be a less efficient solution than the alternatives.</p>
728 If used in per-directory context, use only <code>-</code> (dash)
729 as the substitution <em>for the entire round of mod_rewrite processing</em>,
730 otherwise the MIME-type set with this flag is lost due to an internal
731 re-processing (including subsequent rounds of mod_rewrite processing).
732 The <code>L</code> flag can be useful in this context to end the
733 <em>current</em> round of mod_rewrite processing.</p>