How to deploy yii2 with a web root other than /web - php

Question

I am working on a yii2 project, and would like to deploy it to an apache server where the entire website is expected to exist in the /public_html directory, and /public_html is the web root for that host. The issue is that yii2 expects the web root to be /web, and it expects most of the site hierarchy to exist outside of the /web directory.
I would prefer not to have to change the webroot to /public_html/web, and for future projects, it may not be an option. So, is there a way to place the entire site hierarchy in /public_html , and still have the site work correctly?
I have tried creating a /public_html/.htaccess file with the following contents:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !web/
RewriteRule (.*) /web/$1 [L]
And this seemed to work correctly, at first. Nothing outside of /public_html/web was accessible, and files within subdirectories of /web, such as /web/js/signup.js which could be accessed via the url http://localhost/js/signup.js, but this caused my routing rules (which were set up on a local system where I could have the web root pointing at /web) to no longer be recognized.
So, I would be happy with either an alternate to the .htaccess route, or a suggestion to how to fix the routing rules so that the .htaccess route would work.
Edit for Clarification
I have a hosting provider where the web root is ~/public_html . Yii has documentation explaining that you can rename www to public_html, and have everything that would normally be outside of /www located in ~, along with the various dotfiles and user-documents that Linux normally places in ~. I would prefer to have all site-related directories together (under the webroot).
As an alternative, a two-directory structure, such as the following would work:
~/
|--- (Various dotfiles and subdirectories unrelated to the web site)
|--- yii - Contains all subfolders that should be outside of the web root
|--- commands
|--- config
|--- controllers
|--- (etc...)
|--- public_html - Contains everything that can be within the web root.
|--- (etc...)

Answer 1

This has been asked so many times that they made a page for it in the Yii2 docs.
I personally answered this too many times to remember.

Answer 2

This can be done via the use of aliases.
Move your web directory to the new webroot (assuming ~/mysite.com is your existing site):
rm -rf ~/public_html
mv ~/mysite.com/web ~/public_html
Then, you move everything that was outside of your webroot to the new directory:
mv -prf ~/mysite.com ~/mysite.example-external
At this point, you should have a web root at ~/public_html , and you should have everything else in ~/mysite.example-external. You then edit your ~/public_html/index.php file. Please note that this is not considered part of yii core, so it's ok to modify it. The new index should have some variation on this:
<?php
// comment out the following two lines when deployed to production
defined('YII_DEBUG') or define('YII_DEBUG', true);
defined('YII_ENV') or define('YII_ENV', 'dev');
$thepath = __DIR__ . '/../mysite.example-external';
require( $thepath . '/vendor/autoload.php');
require( $thepath . '/vendor/yiisoft/yii2/Yii.php');
$config = require( $thepath . '/config/web.php');
(new yii\web\Application($config))->run();
From here, you also have to add aliases to your ~/mysite.example-external/config/web.php file, so yii can find its core files. In the web.php, at the point where $config is assigned a value, modify it to look something like the following:
$config = [
'aliases' => [
'webroot/assets' => '/Users/XXXXXX/mysite.example-external/web/assets',
'root' => '/Users/XXXXXX/mysite.example-external/web',
],