Apache Rewrite rule with Laravel not working - php

Question

I have the following directory structure:
/home/username/public_html
my_laravel_app/
.htaccess
app/
bootstrap/
public/
.htaccess
index.php
robots.txt
...etc (standard Laravel 4 public folder contents)
vendor/
...etc (standard Laravel 4 files and folders)
I am trying to use an apache RewriteRule to redirect a request to http://example.com/~user/my_laravel_app to http://example.com/~user/my_laravel_app/public/index.php. In the first .htaccess file (the one directly under the my_laravel_app/ directory, I have the following code:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /~username/my_laravel_app
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !public/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/index.php [R]
</IfModule>
When I navigate my browser to http://example.com/~username/my_laravel_app, I correctly get redirected to http://example.com/~user/my_laravel_app/public/index.php, and the laravel application loads as expected displaying the route for / as defined in app/routes.php.
However, I want the redirect to be internal, meaning, I don't want the users browser to display the new location. So, I simply remove the [R] flag on the rule. The .htaccess file now contains:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /~username/my_laravel_app
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !public/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/index.php
</IfModule>
Now, when I direct the browser to http://example.com/~username/my_laravel_app I get a Laravel whoops error page saying there was a NotFoundHttpException. When I look at the error page, it seems as though the redirect is "working", because I see that the SCRIPT_NAME is /~username/my_laravel_app/public/index.php.
However, I believe the issue is possibly that the REQUEST_URI is /~username/my_laravel_app/, instead of '/', as it would be if Laravel were installed in the root of a domain like normal. So it seems as though Laravel is looking for a route match using this REQUEST_URI variable.
Is there any way to get Laravel to recognize the correct route?

Answer 1

I had the same issue on Laravel 4.1, and appears related to my apache config, however, I did find a workaround which was to add the following to the top of the public/index.php:
$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] = 'path/to/laravel/index.php';
// note: this is a workaround for mod_rewrite and laravel which updates the script_name from /path/to/laravel/public/index.php to /path/to/laravel/index.php. I forget exactly why this worked, but I think when I traced the problem back it was related to something in a symfony dependency.