Combine Laravel 5 with non-laravel pages - php

Question

I am building an application in Laravel which will be in construction for some time. In the meantime, I have 2 "conventional" websites, one static html and one php, which I'd like to include in my source control and make publicly accessible as I build the laravel application.
I have my public folder set up like this :
public/website1/many folders and files
public/website2/many folders and files
public/index.php
I would like to route / redirect users in the following way (lets use my development environment "localhost" as the domain):
localhost/laravelapp/ -> index.php
localhost/website1/ -> website1/index.html
localhost/website2/ -> website2/index.php
This way I can maintain all my code within a single project / source control / server.
But how do I route this!?
I have tried:
Route::get('/website1', function() {
return File::get(public_path() . '/website1/index.html');
});
but this just returns a static file with no relative links to the css folder or other linked files. How can I redirect the user properly to the correct area? Rebuilding the existing sites in Laravel framework is not an option. Thanks.

Answer 1

This should be pretty simple. I assume that you are using apache?
If you put a separate .htaccess file inside public/website1 and public/website2 then those rules will apply instead when you are visiting those routes, ignoring the rewrite rules in public/.htaccess.
You can configure your new .htaccess-files however you want, but all you need is
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
</IfModule>
This is rerouted on the webserver level. Nothing is passed through laravel. This is what you want.
Now, we have solved this part:
localhost/website1/ -> website1/index.html
localhost/website2/ -> website2/index.php
But the laravel app acts like this:
localhost/ -> index.php
instad of:
localhost/laravelapp/ -> index.php
To solve this part, create a new directory inside public called laravelapp
and move public/.htaccess to public\laravelapp\.htaccess and change the following line
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
to
RewriteRule ^ ../index.php [L]

Answer 2

This was solved by by doing a couple of things:
1) VirtualHosts on the webserver to handle the domain name routing. Create a file on the Apache server:
httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName domain1.com
ServerAlias dev.domain1.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/public
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName domain2.com
ServerAlias dev.domain2.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/public/website2
</VirtualHost>
This routed my domains to their subfolders
2) The localhost environment was not working well. I switched from using "php -S server.php" (Laravels own server script configuration) to MAMP for OSX. This instantly cleared up my remaining permissions issues.
I hope this answer can help someone else in the future.