Why does WAMP run script with similar name instead of rewriting URL? - php

Question

I'm trying to rewrite all requests to index.php and then there decide which file to include depending on the value in the $_GET['p'] variable. For example I have a script called update.php in the home directory of my site called leltar, which I would like to be included if the opened page is localhost/leltar/update.
However, the problem is that the rewriting does not work because WAMP runs the script even though the .php extension is not in the link. The output is just the one from the script, nothing is shown from index.php. How can I stop WAMP from running the script with similar name? I suppose, there is something wrong with my .htaccess code as well because if I open pages other than localhost/leltar/update, the value of $_GET['p'] is the string "index.php" all the time.
.htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?p=$1
index.php:
// ...
switch ($_GET['p']) {
case 'update':
require_once('update.php');
break;
default:
// something else
break;
}
// ...
The content of update.php is not relevant.
EDIT:
The main problem is that by default or even when I use the RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f rewrite condition if there is a file with the same name as the user-friendly end of the link, WAMP somehow overrides my rewrite rules. If I put a picture named pic.jpg into the www folder and open localhost/pic.jpg, the image shows up, obviously. However, if I leave out the extension visiting the page localhost/pic, I get the same output as well (instead of getting a 404 Not Found error because of the non-exisiting folder, I suppose).
EDIT 2:
On a real server there isn't any problem. If I leave out the extension a 404 error is thrown, so it's definitely a WAMP-specific thing.

Answer 1

Rules in .htaccess files effectively loop until the URL does not change (because the processing is restarted each time, which means the rules are also processed again) so of course your rule loops until p is equal to itself.
You don't actually need p, you can just check $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] in your PHP script and that will tell you the original requested URI (not the same as REQUEST_URI below, which does change with each rewrite).
So just use this:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/index.php
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
But... you probably want files that exist to be served, such as images, scripts etc. so the usual thing is to do this and check if the file exists:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
Although it's more efficient to do this and list the directories with files in them that you want to be served:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(?:images|css|scripts)/
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
Just change the list to the names of the directories that have your static files in.
Update
From the comments, it seems you have another rewrite that is adding .php to URLs, so they can work without it. In order to not rewrite them to index.php, I suggest putting the rewrite before this one. Otherwise, you can check if the URL exists with .php on the end of it like this. Perhaps combining it with the folder check rather than having two file-system checks.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(?:images|css|scripts)/
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
You can add specific file exceptions to the third rule like this:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(?:images|css|scripts)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/some/url.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/some_other_url.php
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

Answer 2

Indeed, as #SuperDuperApps assumed, the problem was that WAMP has MultiViews enabled by default. Adding Options -MultiViews to my .htaccess file solved all my problems, my initial code mentioned in the question works fine now.