mod_rewrite and relative urls

Question

I'm setting up some simple url rewriting rules using mod_rewrite and a .htacces file, but I've got some problems. If I set up the .htacces this way:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule /index.html /index.php [L]

when I call from the browser this url: http://localhost/~dave/mySite/index.html I got a 404 error.

Using this .htacces instead

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule /index.html http://localhost/~dave/mySite/index.php [L]

everything works fine and I get the index.php page I'm expecting. Am I forced to user absolute urls as the target of a rewrite? Is this a Apache configuration problem?

I'm using Max OS X 10.6.2 with its standard Apache installation.

Answer 1

1. The RewriteBase base directive is setting a base path; you don't need to provide absolute paths in the redirection rules.

2. The rule pattern is not plain text; it's a regular expression.

3. If you set a full URL as target you instruct the browser to redirect to that other location; that kind of redirection is not transparent to the user.

To sum up, try this instead:

RewriteRule ^index\.html$ index.php [L]