apache not serving static content correctly - php

Question

I have been working on my own mvc framework to further my web app learning, but am having trouble serving static resources. I am trying to have a single entry point into the application, aka a front controller, so in my project / I have an .htaccess file that redirects all requests to the app/ folder where another .htaccess passes the request uri to index.php (in app/) who delegates the request to the appropriate controllers.
However, when I try to serve up static content, such as javascripts or cascading style sheets, I still get redirected through app/index.php. I am also getting "favicon.ico does not exist in /var/www" errors in /var/log/apache2/errors.log (maybe because of symlink to ~/www?). I do not expect to because of the following .htaccess file in the root directory of my project root:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Suppress the "www." at the beginning of URLs
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# The same content should never be available under two different URLs - especially not with and
# without "www." at the beginning, since this can cause SEO problems (duplicate content).
# That's why you should choose one of the alternatives and redirect the other one.
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Route static resources to respective files
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond public/$0 -f
RewriteRule ^.+\.(jpg|gif|png|ico|css|js)$ /public/$0 [L]
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Redirect all other requests to the app folder
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
RewriteRule ^$ app/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
and here is the .htaccess in my app/ folder:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
# ensure request is not path to filename or directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# redirect all requests to index.php?url=PATHNAME
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
Why can't I serve static content correctly? This would make sense to me if I wasn't trying to sent all static requests to public/, which is where my css, jpg, png, js, etc files reside. But I have a RewriteCond rule in there to send the requests for such files to the public dir... Confusing?

Answer 1

Assuming, from what I understood, that your project structure is the following:
/
/.htaccess
/app/.htaccess
/app/index.php
/public/static.js (for example)
Here is what I come up with, hoping it'll solve your problem:
the .htaccess in the root folder:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^public/.+\.(jpg|gif|png|ico|css|js)$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ app/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
And the .htaccess in the app folder is unchanged.
Every request starting with public and being a file with the listed extensions won't be redirected which is done with the dash character.
The last rule allows to redirect a request to the app/index.php file.
I think the resulting behaviour is the expected one:
static files in the public directory are not redirected,
files with another extension in the public directory will be
redirected to app/index.php (maybe for some error treatment),
requests not starting with public will be redirected to
app/index.php.