prerender.io .htaccess variable - Reactjs CRA

Question

I set up prerender.io for CRA and it works well, but when bot hits URL without parameters it puts in the end of URL - string ".var"

I tried variations of (.*) but it seems not working. Any ideas?

Here is .htaccess file

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    RequestHeader set X-Prerender-Token "TOKEN"
    RequestHeader set X-Prerender-Version "[email protected]"
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    <IfModule mod_proxy_http.c>
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} googlebot|bingbot|yandex|baiduspider|facebookexternalhit|twitterbot|rogerbot|linkedinbot|embedly|quora\ link\ preview|showyoubot|outbrain|pinterest\/0\.|pinterestbot|slackbot|vkShare|W3C_Validator|whatsapp [NC,OR]
        RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _escaped_fragment_
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(?!.*?(\.js|\.css|\.xml|\.less|\.png|\.jpg|\.jpeg|\.gif|\.pdf|\.doc|\.txt|\.ico|\.rss|\.zip|\.mp3|\.rar|\.exe|\.wmv|\.doc|\.avi|\.ppt|\.mpg|\.mpeg|\.tif|\.wav|\.mov|\.psd|\.ai|\.xls|\.mp4|\.m4a|\.swf|\.dat|\.dmg|\.iso|\.flv|\.m4v|\.torrent|\.ttf|\.woff|\.svg))

        RewriteRule ^(index\.html|index\.php)?(.*) https://service.prerender.io/%{REQUEST_SCHEME}://%{HTTP_HOST}/$2 [P,END]
    </IfModule>
</IfModule>

Jolson

Answer 1

Lately @MrWhite gave us another, better and simple solution - just add DirectoryIndex index.html to .htaccess file will do the same.

---

From the beginning I wrote that DirectoryIndex is working but NO! It seems it's working when you try prerender.io, but in reality it was showing website like this:

and I had to remove it. So it was not issue with .htaccess file, it was coming from the server.

What I did was I went into WHM->Apache Configurations->DirectoryIndex Priority and I saw this list

and yes that was it!

To fix I just moved index.html to the very top second comes index.html.var and after rest of them.

I don't know what index.html.var is for, but I did not risk just to remove it. Hope it helps someone who struggled as me.

Jolson

Using DirectoryIndex without any arguments is undocumented (according to the docs it's not strictly valid). However, the behaviour would seem to be the same as DirectoryIndex disabled. (Although the fact that you appeared to be seeing an "external redirect" would perhaps suggest that DirectoryIndexRedirect on was set? This defaults to off and can be set to off in .htaccess.) – Khamsin

You are right I know, I realized later, but I'm going back and forth with their support and I don't have solution yet. As soon as I'll have it I'll update this post. Thank you – Jolson

Thanks for the follow-up. To clarify... "I wrote that DirectoryIndex is working" - What you did before completely disabled the DirectoryIndex. "It seems it's working when you try prerender.io" - prerender.io probably just saw the 200 OK response and assumed it was working. The output you were seeing (a directory listing) was because Options Indexes is enabled (probably in the server config), otherwise the request would have resulted in a 403 and prerender.io would have probably failed. Indexes should not be enabled. You should set Options +FollowSymLinks -Indexes in .htaccess. – Khamsin

"So it was not issue with .htaccess file" - Although this could have been resolved using .htaccess. What you eventually did in the server's WHM control panel is effectively the same as setting DirectoryIndex index.html in .htaccess (which overrides the server config). – Khamsin

@Khamsin you are absolutely right! Just I was struggled so much and there was nobody to help. I asked prerender.io support, web hosting support, nobody even gave me a clue. So finally I ended up doing this thing in WHM. Thank you for .htaccess solution :) Obviously you could help but because of my lack of experience I even couldn't explain that well for someone to understand... Thank you – Jolson