Redirect to php script using htaccess - php

Question

For a web-application I would like to rewrite the URL.
From:
http://example.com/api/logger/all
To:
http://example.com/api/index.php/logger/all
So I tried the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/index.php/
RewriteRule ^api(.*)$ api/index.php$1 [L]
I also testet it successfully with http://htaccess.madewithlove.be/.
On the server I get a 404.
My project struct looks like following:
--api
----index.php
--htaccess
--index.html
Update:
I found a solution for external redirects.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !(index\.php)
RewriteRule ^api/(.*)$ /api/index.php/$1 [R=302]
But I need a internal redirect and if remove [R=302] I get 404 with "No input file specified." as response.
Following htaccess file works for
http://example.com/logger/all.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !(index\.php)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /api/index.php/$1
But adding api again results in "No input file specified."
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !(index\.php)
RewriteRule ^api(.*)$ /api/index.php/$1

Answer 1

mod_rewrite is a double-edged sword that is incredibly easy to misuse.
Apache 2.2.16 and later provide the extremely useful but surprisingly seldom used FallbackResource directive.
So use the following layout:
--api
----.htaccess
----index.php
--index.html
And use the following contents for your .htaccess file:
FallbackResource /api/index.php
The main difference with the mod_rewrite based solutions is that there is no substitution in the URI, so you have to parse the URI in PHP using $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].
For example here, if you access http://example.com/api/logger/all, your index.php file will see the following value:
echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; // prints /api/logger/all
The main interest of putting the .htaccess file in the api directory is that it ensures that only URLs under the /api prefix are handled by FallbackResource. Any URL that would cause a 404 error in the document root folder will not trigger a call to /api/index.php.