Rewriting urls with .htaccess? - php

I'm trying to rewrite a url but I can't seem to make it happen.
I just want one working example so I can move on to all pages of my website.
So I have this link:
www.domain.com/article.php?id=1
And I can to change it to:
www.domain.com/article/1/
That's ok for now, later I'll replace the number with the article title.
This is what I have on my .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On # Turn on the rewriting engine
RewriteRule ^article\.php\?id=([0-9]+)$ article/$1/
What is wrong it it? I heard that the .htaccess file needs to be in ASCII if using FTP to save in on the server but I don't know how to do it since I created it by myself.

You can't match against the query string in a rewrite rule, you need to match against %{QUERY_STRING} in a condition:
RewriteEngine On # Turn on the rewriting engine
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=([0-9]+)$
RewriteRule ^article\.php$ article/%1/? [L]
This internally rewrites your request to /article/1/. The browser will still see the old URL.
What you are more likely looking for is to match against the request:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \ /+article\.php\?id=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^ /article/%1/? [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^article/([0-9]+)/?$ /article.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]

You are doing this backwards, quite literally.
RewriteRule ^article/([0-9]+)$ /article.php?id=$1

Related

Use htaccess to rewrite php extensions and query strings [duplicate]

Yes, I've read the Apache manual and searched here. For some reason I simply cannot get this to work. The closest I've come is having it remove the extension, but it points back to the root directory. I want this to just work in the directory that contains the .htaccess file.
I need to do three things with the .htaccess file.
I need it to remove the .php
a. I have several pages that use tabs and the URL looks like page.php#tab - is this possible?
b. I have one page that uses a session ID appended to the URL to make sure you came from the right place, www.domain.example/download-software.php?abcdefg.
Is this possible? Also in doing this, do I need to remove .php from the links in my header nav include file? Should IE "support" be support?
I would like it to force www before every URL, so it's not domain.example, but www.domain.example/page.
I would like to remove all trailing slashes from pages.
I'll keep looking, trying, etc. Would being in a sub directory cause any issues?
Gumbo's answer in the Stack Overflow question How to hide the .html extension with Apache mod_rewrite should work fine.
Re 1) Change the .html to .php
Re a.) Yup, that's possible, just add #tab to the URL.
Re b.) That's possible using QSA (Query String Append), see below.
This should also work in a sub-directory path:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule !.*\.php$ %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php [QSA,L]
Apache mod_rewrite
What you're looking for is mod_rewrite,
Description: Provides a rule-based rewriting engine to rewrite
requested URLs on the fly.
Generally speaking, mod_rewrite works by matching the requested document against specified regular expressions, then performs URL rewrites internally (within the Apache process) or externally (in the clients browser). These rewrites can be as simple as internally translating example.com/foo into a request for example.com/foo/bar.
The Apache docs include a mod_rewrite guide and I think some of the things you want to do are covered in it. Detailed mod_rewrite guide.
Force the www subdomain
I would like it to force "www" before every URL, so its not domain.example but www.domain.example/page
The rewrite guide includes instructions for this under the Canonical Hostname example.
Remove trailing slashes (Part 1)
I would like to remove all trailing slashes from pages
I'm not sure why you would want to do this as the rewrite guide includes an example for the exact opposite, i.e., always including a trailing slash. The docs suggest that removing the trailing slash has great potential for causing issues:
Trailing Slash Problem
Description:
Every webmaster can sing a song about the problem of the trailing
slash on URLs referencing directories. If they are missing, the server
dumps an error, because if you say /~quux/foo instead of /~quux/foo/
then the server searches for a file named foo. And because this file
is a directory it complains. Actually it tries to fix it itself in
most of the cases, but sometimes this mechanism need to be emulated by
you. For instance after you have done a lot of complicated URL
rewritings to CGI scripts etc.
Perhaps you could expand on why you want to remove the trailing slash all the time?
Remove .php extension
I need it to remove the .php
The closest thing to doing this that I can think of is to internally rewrite every request document with a .php extension, i.e., example.com/somepage is instead processed as a request for example.com/somepage.php. Note that proceeding in this manner would would require that each somepage actually exists as somepage.php on the filesystem.
With the right combination of regular expressions this should be possible to some extent. However, I can foresee some possible issues with index pages not being requested correctly and not matching directories correctly.
For example, this will correctly rewrite example.com/test as a request for example.com/test.php:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php
But will make example.com fail to load because there is no example.com/.php
I'm going to guess that if you're removing all trailing slashes, then picking a request for a directory index from a request for a filename in the parent directory will become almost impossible. How do you determine a request for the directory 'foobar':
example.com/foobar
from a request for a file called foobar (which is actually foobar.php)
example.com/foobar
It might be possible if you used the RewriteBase directive. But if you do that then this problem gets way more complicated as you're going to require RewriteCond directives to do filesystem level checking if the request maps to a directory or a file.
That said, if you remove your requirement of removing all trailing slashes and instead force-add trailing slashes the "no .php extension" problem becomes a bit more reasonable.
# Turn on the rewrite engine
RewriteEngine on
# If the request doesn't end in .php (Case insensitive) continue processing rules
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.php$ [NC]
# If the request doesn't end in a slash continue processing the rules
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [^/]$
# Rewrite the request with a .php extension. L means this is the 'Last' rule
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L]
This still isn't perfect -- every request for a file still has .php appended to the request internally. A request for 'hi.txt' will put this in your error logs:
[Tue Oct 26 18:12:52 2010] [error] [client 71.61.190.56] script '/var/www/test.peopleareducks.com/rewrite/hi.txt.php' not found or unable to stat
But there is another option, set the DefaultType and DirectoryIndex directives like this:
DefaultType application/x-httpd-php
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
Update 2013-11-14 - Fixed the above snippet to incorporate nicorellius's observation
Now requests for hi.txt (and anything else) are successful, requests to example.com/test will return the processed version of test.php, and index.php files will work again.
I must give credit where credit is due for this solution as I found it Michael J. Radwins Blog by searching Google for php no extension apache.
Remove trailing slashes
Some searching for apache remove trailing slashes brought me to some Search Engine Optimization pages. Apparently some Content Management Systems (Drupal in this case) will make content available with and without a trailing slash in URLs, which in the SEO world will cause your site to incur a duplicate content penalty. Source
The solution seems fairly trivial, using mod_rewrite we rewrite on the condition that the requested resource ends in a / and rewrite the URL by sending back the 301 Permanent Redirect HTTP header.
Here's his example which assumes your domain is blamcast.net and allows the the request to optionally be prefixed with www..
#get rid of trailing slashes
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?blamcast\.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
Now we're getting somewhere. Lets put it all together and see what it looks like.
Mandatory www., no .php, and no trailing slashes
This assumes the domain is foobar.example and it is running on the standard port 80.
# Process all files as PHP by default
DefaultType application/x-httpd-php
# Fix sub-directory requests by allowing 'index' as a DirectoryIndex value
DirectoryIndex index index.html
# Force the domain to load with the www subdomain prefix
# If the request doesn't start with www...
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.foobar\.com [NC]
# And the site name isn't empty
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
# Finally rewrite the request: end of rules, don't escape the output, and force a 301 redirect
RewriteRule ^/?(.*) http://www.foobar.example/$1 [L,R,NE]
#get rid of trailing slashes
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?foobar\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
The 'R' flag is described in the RewriteRule directive section. Snippet:
redirect|R [=code] (force redirect) Prefix Substitution with
http://thishost[:thisport]/ (which makes the new URL a URI) to force
a external redirection. If no code is given, a HTTP response of 302
(MOVED TEMPORARILY) will be returned.
Final Note
I wasn't able to get the slash removal to work successfully. The redirect ended up giving me infinite redirect loops. After reading the original solution closer I get the impression that the example above works for them because of how their Drupal installation is configured. He mentions specifically:
On a normal Drupal site, with clean URLs enabled, these two addresses
are basically interchangeable
In reference to URLs ending with and without a slash. Furthermore,
Drupal uses a file called .htaccess to tell your web server how to
handle URLs. This is the same file that enables Drupal's clean URL
magic. By adding a simple redirect command to the beginning of your
.htaccess file, you can force the server to automatically remove any
trailing slashes.
In addition to other answers above,
You may also try this to remove .php extensions completely from your file and to avoid infinite loop:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ $1.php [NC,L]
This code will work in Root/.htaccess,
Be sure to change the RewriteBase if you want to place this to a htaccess file in sub directory.
On Apache 2.4 and later, you can also use the END flag to prevent infinite loop error. The following example works same as the above on Apache 2.4,
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.php$ /$1 [R,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ /$1.php [NC,END]
The following code works fine for me:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php
After changing the parameter AllowOverride from None to All in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (Debian 8), following this, the .htaccess file just must contain:
Options +MultiViews
AddHandler php5-script php
AddType text/html php
And it was enough to hide .php extension from files
I've ended up with the following working code:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [NC,L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [NC,L]
Here's a method if you want to do it for just one specific file:
RewriteRule ^about$ about.php [L]
Ref: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/htaccess/remove-file-extention-from-urls/
Try this
The following code will definitely work
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [NC,L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [NC,L]
Not sure why the other answers didn't work for me but this code I found did:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
That is all that is in my htaccess and example.com/page shows example.com/page.php
To remove the .php extension from a PHP file for example yoursite.example/about.php to yoursite.example/about: Open .htaccess (create new one if not exists) file from root of your website, and add the following code.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
To remove the .html extension from a HTML file for example yoursite.example/about.html to yoursite.example/about: Open .htaccess (create new one if not exists) file from root of your website, and add the following code.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]
Reference: How to Remove PHP Extension from URL
Try this:-
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule !.*\.php$ %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php [QSA,L]
I found 100% working Concept for me:
# Options is required by Many Hosting
Options +MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
# For .php & .html URL's:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]
Use this code in Root of your website .htaccess file like :
offline - wamp\www\YourWebDir
online - public_html/
If it doesn't work correct, then change the settings of your Wamp
Server: 1) Left click WAMP icon 2) Apache 3) Apache Modules 4) Left
click rewrite_module
Here is the code that I used to hide the .php extension from the filename:
## hide .php extension
# To redirect /dir/foo.php to /dir/foo
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L,NC]
Note: R=301 is for permanent redirect and is recommended to use for SEO purpose. However if one wants just a temporary redirect replace it with just R
Try
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L]
If you're coding in PHP and want to remove .php so you can have a URL like:
http://yourdomain.example/blah -> which points to /blah.php
This is all you need:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
If your URL in PHP like http://yourdomain.example/demo.php than comes like
http://yourdomain.example/demo
This is all you need:
create file .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} "^[^ ]* .*?\.php[? ].*$"
RewriteRule .* - [L,R=404]

.htacces url_rewrite difficulties

I have a problem with the configuration of the .htaccess of small website that I'm working on.
I want all pages to be redirected to index.php?page=REQUEST and that file will find in the database the content for the requested page.
The problem occurs when I have installed a forum, so I want these forum pages to redirect to the index.php?page=forum&params
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /(.*).html
RewriteRule ^(.*)forum/category/(.*)?$ index\.php?page=forum&lang=$1&category=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)(\.html?)$ index\.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.html?)$ index\.php?page=$1 [L]
Evetything works fine, except the forum part. How do I need to change the .htacces?
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule \.(jpg|png|gif|svg|css|js)$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/forum/topic/(.*)?$ index\.php?page=forum&lang=$1&topic=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/forum/category/(.*)?$ index\.php?page=forum&lang=$1&category=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)(\.html?)$ index\.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.html?)$ index\.php?page=$1 [L]
The problem appears to be that your RewriteCond is matching requests that end in .html. As your forum URLs don't end in .html the condition for the subsequent RewriteRule is never met.
There are some other possible problems too:
^(.*)forum will match www.url.com/en/ when it looks like you probably just want en
category/(.*) will match any characters, including forward slashes and the like. Presumably you just want it to match a decimal identifier.
Links to things that aren't covered by your rewrite config e.g. images
I'd probably rewrite your config to look something like this (N.B. not tested in Apache; only in a regex debugger):
RewriteEngine on
# only match forum URLs
# e.g url.com/en/forum/category/12345
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/.+/forum/category/[0-9]+
RewriteRule ^/(.+)/forum/category/([0-9]+) index.php?page=forum&lang=$1&category=$2 [L]
# match all URLs ending in .html
# e.g. url.com/en/foo.html
# and url.com/foo.html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/.+\.html$
# a bit complicated, this matches both
# /apage.html
# /folder/apage.html
RewriteRule ^(?:/(.+))?/(.+)\.html$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [L]
The second RewriteRule should always provide a value for page but only provide a value for lang if the URL is of the form /lang/page.html. This should be OK if your index.php file can accept an empty lang parameter or supply a default value.
Alternatively, if you don't mind keeping your existing regex and it's only images, CSS etc you want to bypass in URL rewriting you can add some rules at the start to skip them e.g.
RewriteEngine on
# don't actually rewrite, and stop processing rules
RewriteRule \.(jpg|png|css|js)$ - [L]
# only match forum URLs
# e.g url.com/en/forum/category/12345
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/.+/forum/category/[0-9]+
RewriteRule ^/(.+)/forum/category/([0-9]+) index.php?page=forum&lang=$1&category=$2 [L]
etc...

htaccess redirect encoded url to homepage

I have an external backlink which is linking incorrectly to my website.
They are adding /%E2%80%8E to the end of the link so it is coming in as http://mywebsite.com/%E2%80%8E.
I want to use htaccess to redirect these people to my homepage.
This is what I currently have:
#This version does not work for some reason
RewriteRule %E2%80%8E https://mysite.com [B,R,L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} %E2%80%8E
RewriteRule .? https://mysite.com [B,R,L]
# This version works if I type in the DECODED version of the string
RewriteRule ‎ https://mysite.com [R,L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ‎
RewriteRule .? https://mysite.com [R,L]
Thanks
If you don't want to use the decoded string, you can use \x##. The reason why the decoded string works is that in RewriteRule's, the URI is decoded before the pattern is applied.
RewriteRule ^\xE2\x80\x8E$ / [L,R=301]
Give this a try in your htaccess.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s/%E2%80%8E\s [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://mysite.com/ [L,R=301]
You could solve this problem without using .htaccess rewrite. On some of my website I do check, either in the header of the page (with PHP or JS) or in a custom 404 page.
In my opinion this method is slightly better than mod rewrite just because it doesn't require you to have the mod_rewrite module enabled on the server.

Remove .PHP File Extension in URL

I am having a little issue forcing the .php file extension to be removed in the URL.
I am successfully able to remove .php file extension if user:
#Remove PHP if original request is /foo/bar.php
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} "^[^ ]* .*?\.php[? ].*$"
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.php(\?.*)?$ $1$2 [R=301,L]
My goal is to get it also to remove the extension if:
# Remove PHP if original request is /foo.php/bar
I ask because right now a user can go to the URL and type http://www.site.com/contact.php/about and it will render my about page. My goal is force the removal of the .php and render:
http://www.site.com/contact/about
I was hoping to take the code I have above and add it to but I can not figure it out.
TIA
It looks like you got the removing part, but you're missing the internally rewriting part. What you have attempts to remove the php out of the URL and redirects the client to a URL without it. But your condition isn't matching requests, change it to:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ .*\.php.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.php(.*)?$ /$1$2 [R=301,L]
Then you need to internally rewrite it back (don't redirect browser). So in the same htaccess file, add:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([^/]+)(.*)$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%1.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)(.*)$ /$1.php$2 [L]
the following .htaccess gives me the requested parameters, you can get "page"
AddDefaultCharset utf-8
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule .* - [L]
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{3,20})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)?$ index\.php?page=$1&s=$2&o=$3 [L]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{3,20})/([^/]+)?$ index\.php?page=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{3,20})/?$ index\.php?page=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{3,20})?$ index\.php?page=$1 [L]
ErrorDocument 404 /404
Get "page" parameter and then call it like this
include('inc/'.$_REQUEST['page'].'.php');
and remember to remove .php ext from your links
Replace your tow lines with this single one : (you have an error in your rule, that's why it is not detecting .php in the middle and you don't need the rewrite condition)
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.php(/.*)?$ /$1$2 [L,R=301]
My solution for these problems is to basically avoid using complex rewrite rules and do URL routing from the php side, via a simple front controller.
Write the following .htaccess file at the root of your website:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [L]
Then write an index.php file in the same directory.
In the index.php file, you can still get the whole URL information, and choose a PHP file to include based on this.
<?php
// urldecode and get rid of the query string, $_GET is still available
$url = urldecode(preg_replace('/\\?(.*)$/', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']));
if ($url == '/contact/about') {
include 'contact.php';
}
That example is extremely basic, and I am probably ignoring subtleties of your website's architecture, but this approach is much more viable in the long run, because you can really map any URL of your liking to PHP scripts without having to endure the complexity of mod_rewrite.
This is the pattern that has been adopted by virtually every existing PHP framework (at least the MVC ones).
An minimalist example of this approach can be found in the Slim micro framework: http://www.slimframework.com/

Apache Mod Rewrite: RewriteRule with L argument. What's wrong?

I'm developing a php application and I have a little issue with Apache and Mod Rewrite. Anyone knows what's wrong here?:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /mysite/
RewriteRule ^css\/css\.css css/css.php [L]
RewriteRule ^js\/js\.js js/js.php [L]
RewriteRule !^img\/.* index.php
When I put http://localhost/css/css.css appears index.php, maybe I'm missing something...
Why when the url matchs with the first rule apache doesn't stop the rewriting process?
'last|L' (last rule)
Stop the rewriting process here and
don't apply any more rewriting rules.
This corresponds to the Perl last
command or the break command from the
C language. Use this flag to prevent
the currently rewritten URL from being
rewritten further by following rules.
For example, use it to rewrite the
root-path URL ('/') to a real one,
e.g., '/e/www/'.
I have readed forums and docs since 3 hours and I still have the same problem.
Thanks in advance.
Centauro12, the problem is, that the [L] flag in fact stops propagation through the following rules, but then (if you are in an .htaccess file) the URL mapping starts over again. That means, all your rules will then be processed a second time. See the Apache Rewrite Guide for the details.
Therefore you need to explicitly disable rewriting for your rewritten php scripts:
RewriteRule ^css/css.php - [L]
RewriteRule ^js/js.php - [L]
or more compact (although perhaps not what you want):
# don't rewrite anything that really exists
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule .* - [L]
I've found a solution:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /mysite/
RewriteRule ^css\/css\.css css/css.php [L]
RewriteRule ^css\/(.*)$ css/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^js\/js\.js js/js.php [L]
RewriteRule ^js\/(.*)$ js/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^img/(.*)$ img/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?rewrite=$1
It works fine, but I don't know why it's necessary
RewriteRule ^css\/(.*)$ css/$1 [L]
and
RewriteRule ^js\/(.*)$ js/$1 [L]
I hope it hepls anyone.
Thanks! :)
try
RewriteRule ^/css/css\.css css/css.php [L]
RewriteRule ^/js/js\.js js/js.php [L]
RewriteRule ! /^img/.* index.php
ie. if you ^-anchor the pattern to the beginning of the string, start it with a /. patterns are matched against URL-paths, which start with /.
EDIT
above is valid for server config, virtual host, and directory context only. if the context is .htaccess, the per-directory prefix including the first slash is stripped before the rule is matched (and prepended afterwards), so no need for ^/ here.
You might have to set your rewrite base to "/" before starting your expression with "^css..."
RewriteBase /

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