Semantic URLs for static HTML files with .htaccess and mod_rewrite

Question

mod_rewrite always baffles me... can anyone tell me the rules I need to get the following clean URLs? Desired URL on the left, real URL on the right.

/our-work/ => /our-work.html
/our-work/some-project/ => /our-work/some-project.html
/contact/ => /contact.html

As you can see, I want to force trailing slashes on all URLs too.

Thanks!

Anonym

Answer 1

Try this rule:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ $1.html [L]

And for adding trailing slashes:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .*[^/]$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=301]

Make sure to put those rules that cause an external redirect (explicitly using R flag or implicitly) in front of those rules that just cause an internal redirect/rewrite. So in this case:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .*[^/]$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ $1.html [L]

Overstuffed

Thanks. That works for the top level /our-work/ example but ends up redirecting me to URLs like /redirect:/our-work/some-project.html.html.html/ when I'm hitting URLs with two levels like /our-work/some-project/. I should also say that I'm using this on a localhost URL at the moment with the ports specified. – Anonym

Just tested in another environment, crazy redirect URL was a problem from somewhere else, no idea where. Your solution is perfect thanks! – Anonym

@alistair.mp: Ah, you’re right. I’ve added a condition that tests whether the rewrite will be point to an existing file to avoid infinite recursion. – Overstuffed