.htaccess rewrite to index.php infinite loop - php

Question

I am building a clean url system using .htaccess and php.
The main idea is to rewrite everything to index.php and to split the url to segments separated by /.
It works but when I upload it to web server I get an infinite loop error.
My .htaccess file is:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
If I get things correctly - the problem is that it redirects index.php to itself but it shouldn't because I have index.php file that handles everything and RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f which should prevent that rewrite.
Could you please help me with this .htaccess - I want it to rewrite everything to index.php and to be as portable as it can be, so I can use it in:
www.mysite.com
www.myothersite.com
or even
www.mysite.com/new/
I also want to redirect something like www.mysite.com/articles/2 to index.php as well as www.mysite.com/articles/it/2 or even www.mysite.com/articles/it/search/searchterm

Answer 1

Here's code taken from Drupal's .htaccess which uses the "clean urls" approach you are trying to achieve.
# Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
In this case, it appends the clean URL as the "q" querystring parameter. So then your script can detect what content to deliver based on $_GET['q'].
And here's another approach, this one from Wordpress.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
This one specifically looks for requests to index.php and filters them out before doing the redirection.