cakePHP - Apache and mod_rewrite (and .htaccess) - making pretty URLs

While CakePHP is built to work with mod_rewrite out of the box–and usually does–we've noticed that a few users struggle with getting everything to play nicely on their systems.

Here are a few things you might try to get it running correctly. First look at your httpd.conf (Make sure you are editing the system httpd.conf rather than a user- or site-specific httpd.conf).

1. Make sure that an .htaccess override is allowed and that AllowOverride is set to All for the correct DocumentRoot. You should see something similar to:

   #
   # Each directory to which Apache has access can be configured with respect
    # to which services and features are allowed and/or disabled in that
   # directory (and its subdirectories). 
   #
   # First, we configure the "default" to be a very restrictive set of 
   # features.  
   #
    <Directory />
       Options FollowSymLinks
       AllowOverride All
   #    Order deny,allow
   #    Deny from all
   </Directory>
   

   1. #
   2. # Each directory to which Apache has access can be configured with respect
   3. # to which services and features are allowed and/or disabled in that
   4. # directory (and its subdirectories).
   5. #
   6. # First, we configure the "default" to be a very restrictive set of
   7. # features.
   8. #
   9. <Directory />
   10. Options FollowSymLinks
   11. AllowOverride All
   12. # Order deny,allow
   13. # Deny from all
   14. </Directory>

2. Make sure you are loading up mod_rewrite correctly. You should see something like:

   LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so

   1. LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so

   In many systems these will be commented out (by being prepended with a #) by default, so you may just need to remove those leading # symbols.

   After you make changes, restart Apache to make sure the settings are active.

   Verify that you your .htaccess files are actually in the right directories. This can happen during copying because some operating systems treat files that start with '.' as hidden and therefore won't see them to copy.

3. Make sure your copy of CakePHP is from the downloads section of the site or our GIT repository, and has been unpacked correctly by checking for .htaccess files.

   Cake root directory (needs to be copied to your document, this redirects everything to your Cake app):

   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
      RewriteEngine on
      RewriteRule    ^$ app/webroot/    [L]
      RewriteRule    (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
   </IfModule>
   

   1. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   2. RewriteEngine on
   3. RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
   4. RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
   5. </IfModule>

   Cake app directory (will be copied to the top directory of your application by bake):

   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
       RewriteEngine on
       RewriteRule    ^$    webroot/    [L]
       RewriteRule    (.*) webroot/$1    [L]
    </IfModule>
   

   1. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   2. RewriteEngine on
   3. RewriteRule ^$ webroot/ [L]
   4. RewriteRule (.*) webroot/$1 [L]
   5. </IfModule>

   Cake webroot directory (will be copied to your application's web root by bake):

    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
       RewriteEngine On
       RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
       RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
       RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
   </IfModule>
   

   1. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   2. RewriteEngine On
   3. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   4. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   5. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
   6. </IfModule>

   For many hosting services (GoDaddy, 1and1), your web server is actually being served from a user directory that already uses mod_rewrite. If you are installing CakePHP into a user directory (http://example.com/~username/cakephp/), or any other URL structure that already utilizes mod_rewrite, you'll need to add RewriteBase statements to the .htaccess files CakePHP uses (/.htaccess, /app/.htaccess, /app/webroot/.htaccess).

   This can be added to the same section with the RewriteEngine directive, so for example your webroot .htaccess file would look like:

   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
       RewriteEngine On
       RewriteBase /
       RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
       RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
       RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
    </IfModule>
   

   1. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   2. RewriteEngine On
   3. RewriteBase /
   4. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   5. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   6. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
   7. </IfModule>

   The details of those changes will depend on your setup, and can include additional things that are not Cake related. Please refer to Apache's online documentation for more information.