Removing a folder from the URL using Apache mod_rewrite

In order to use mod_rewrite you can type the following command in the terminal:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Restart apache2 after

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

or

sudo service apache2 restart

or as per new unified System Control Way

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Then, if you'd like, you can use the following .htaccess file.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

The above .htaccess file (if placed in your DocumentRoot) will redirect all traffic to an index.php file in the DocumentRoot unless the file exists.

So, let's say you have the following directory structure and httpdocs is the DocumentRoot

httpdocs/
    .htaccess
    index.php
    images/
        hello.png
    js/
        jquery.js
    css/
        style.css
includes/
    app/
        app.php

Any file that exists in httpdocs will be served to the requester using the .htaccess shown above, however, everything else will be redirected to httpdocs/index.php. Your application files in includes/app will not be accessible.

Here's a .htaccess file copied from the CodeIgniter PHP framework:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

This redirects everything that isn't index.php, robots.txt or anything in the images folder to index.php/$1, where $1 is the URL the user entered.

You need these rules as:

• Redirecting index.php would cause an infinte loop - http://localhost/index.php/index.php/index.php/...
• robots.txt is an important file that search engines use. It is just plain text; you don't want it handled by your code.
• You obviously want to keep having access to your images. Adjust this path as necessary for where your static assets are located.