Rewrite to another document root - php

Question

I'm working on a new website which is supposed to replace an old one. The new website will use Phalcon and it's using its own routing system. The new website will be accessible using www.mydomain.com, like the previous one. The new website DocumentRoot is /var/www/mydomain-www, the old one is instead /var/www/mydomain-platform.
Inside this "platform" there are some "web services", that many other applications (included an iOS and an Android apps) are using. Unfortunately, the new website must use these web services as well. :-(
Basically there is a PHP file for each API call and all these files are located in the root of the old website, specifically /var/www/mydomain-platform. I know it's a mess but I have to deal with that, I have inherited it. In the old website root there is also a .htaccess file that contains a rewrite route for every single API call, to the right PHP file. They look like:
RewriteRule ^ws/event/games(.*)$ /ws_events.php$1
RewriteRule ^ws/favourites/list(.*)$ /ws_teams_favorites.php$1
I need to find a way to rewrite all the url for www.mydomain.com/ws/(.*) to the directory /var/www/mydomain-platform/ws, because the web services' files are there and I don't really want to move them in the root directory of the new website.
I thought to create a symlink var/www/mydomain.www/ws pointing to the directory /var/www/mydomain-platform/ws, but I'm sure the below vhost configuration will not like it, because it will redirect everything to /var/www/mydomain/public.
I would like to put these redirect stuff inside a .htaccess, and leave the vhost like it is.
Any idea?
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.mydomain.com
ServerAdmin dev#mydomain.co.uk
DocumentRoot "/var/www/mydomain-www"
ErrorLog "${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.mydomain.com-error_log"
CustomLog "${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.mydomain.com-access_log" common
AllowEncodedSlashes On
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
<Directory /var/www/mydomain-www>
AuthType None
AllowOverride all
Require all granted
<IfModule rewrite_module>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ public/ [L]
RewriteRule ((?s).*) public/$1 [B,NE,L]
</IfModule>
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/mydomain-www/public>
<IfModule rewrite_module>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^((?s).*)$ index.php?_url=/$1 [B,NE,QSA,L]
</IfModule>
</Directory>
<FilesMatch "(?i)\.php$">
Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch "index\.php$">
Require all granted
</FilesMatch>
</VirtualHost>

Answer 1

You can move ws folder to /var/www/mydomain-www directory or create a symbolic link in the new directory. Then you need to change rule in /var/www/mydomain-www to skip anything with /ws/ in front:
<Directory /var/www/mydomain-www>
AuthType None
AllowOverride all
Require all granted
<IfModule rewrite_module>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ public/ [L]
RewriteRule ^/?((?!ws2/|ws3/).*)$ public/$1 [B,NE,L,NC]
</IfModule>
</Directory>