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-
- <manualpage metafile="urlmapping.xml.meta">
-
- <title>Mapping URLs to Filesystem Locations</title>
-
- <summary>
- <p>This document explains how Apache uses the URL of a request
- to determine the filesystem location from which to serve a
- file.</p>
- </summary>
-
- <section id="related"><title>Related Modules and Directives</title>
-
- <related>
- <modulelist>
- <module>mod_alias</module>
- <module>mod_proxy</module>
- <module>mod_rewrite</module>
- <module>mod_userdir</module>
- <module>mod_speling</module>
- <module>mod_vhost_alias</module>
- </modulelist>
- <directivelist>
- <directive module="mod_alias">Alias</directive>
- <directive module="mod_alias">AliasMatch</directive>
- <directive module="mod_speling">CheckSpelling</directive>
- <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>
- <directive module="core">ErrorDocument</directive>
- <directive module="core">Options</directive>
- <directive module="mod_proxy">ProxyPass</directive>
- <directive module="mod_proxy">ProxyPassReverse</directive>
- <directive module="mod_alias">Redirect</directive>
- <directive module="mod_alias">RedirectMatch</directive>
- <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteCond</directive>
- <directive module="mod_rewrite">RewriteMatch</directive>
- <directive module="mod_alias">ScriptAlias</directive>
- <directive module="mod_alias">ScriptAliasMatch</directive>
- <directive module="mod_userdir">UserDir</directive>
- </directivelist>
- </related>
- </section>
-
- <section id="documentroot"><title>DocumentRoot</title>
-
- <p>In deciding what file to serve for a given request, Apache's
- default behavior is to take the URL-Path for the request (the part
- of the URL following the hostname and port) and add it to the end
- of the <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive> specified
- in your configuration files. Therefore, the files and directories
- underneath the <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>
- make up the basic document tree which will be visible from the
- web.</p>
-
- <p>Apache is also capable of <a href="vhosts/">Virtual
- Hosting</a>, where the server receives requests for more than one
- host. In this case, a different <directive
- module="core">DocumentRoot</directive> can be specified for each
- virtual host, or alternatively, the directives provided by the
- module <module>mod_vhost_alias</module> can
- be used to dynamically determine the appropriate place from which
- to serve content based on the requested IP address or
- hostname.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="outside"><title>Files Outside the DocumentRoot</title>
-
- <p>There are frequently circumstances where it is necessary to
- allow web access to parts of the filesystem that are not strictly
- underneath the <directive
- module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>. Apache offers several
- different ways to accomplish this. On Unix systems, symbolic links
- can bring other parts of the filesystem under the <directive
- module="core">DocumentRoot</directive>. For security reasons,
- Apache will follow symbolic links only if the <directive
- module="core">Options</directive> setting for the relevant
- directory includes <code>FollowSymLinks</code> or
- <code>SymLinksIfOwnerMatch</code>.</p>
-
- <p>Alternatively, the <directive
- module="mod_alias">Alias</directive> directive will map any part
- of the filesystem into the web space. For example, with</p>
-
- <example>Alias /docs /var/web</example>
-
- <p>the URL <code>http://www.example.com/docs/dir/file.html</code>
- will be served from <code>/var/web/dir/file.html</code>. The
- <directive module="mod_alias">ScriptAlias</directive> directive
- works the same way, with the additional effect that all content
- located at the target path is treated as CGI scripts.</p>
-
- <p>For situations where you require additional flexibility, you
- can use the <directive module="mod_alias">AliasMatch</directive> and
- <directive module="mod_alias">ScriptAliasMatch</directive>
- directives to do powerful regular-expression based matching and
- substitution. For example,</p>
-
- <example>ScriptAliasMatch ^/~([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/cgi-bin/(.+)
- /home/$1/cgi-bin/$2</example>
-
- <p>will map a request to
- <code>http://example.com/~user/cgi-bin/script.cgi</code> to the
- path <code>/home/user/cgi-bin/script.cgi</code> and will treat
- the resulting file as a CGI script.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="user"><title>User Directories</title>
-
- <p>Traditionally on Unix systems, the home directory of a
- particular <em>user</em> can be referred to as
- <code>~user/</code>. The module <module>mod_userdir</module>
- extends this idea to the web by allowing files under each user's
- home directory to be accessed using URLs such as the
- following.</p>
-
- <example>http://www.example.com/~user/file.html</example>
-
- <p>For security reasons, it is inappropriate to give direct
- access to a user's home directory from the web. Therefore, the
- <directive module="mod_userdir">UserDir</directive> directive
- specifies a directory underneath the user's home directory
- where web files are located. Using the default setting of
- <code>Userdir public_html</code>, the above URL maps to a file
- at a directory like
- <code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code> where
- <code>/home/user/</code> is the user's home directory as
- specified in <code>/etc/passwd</code>.</p>
-
- <p>There are also several other forms of the
- <code>Userdir</code> directive which you can use on systems
- where <code>/etc/passwd</code> does not contain the location of
- the home directory.</p>
-
- <p>Some people find the "~" symbol (which is often encoded on the
- web as <code>%7e</code>) to be awkward and prefer to use an
- alternate string to represent user directories. This functionality
- is not supported by mod_userdir. However, if users' home
- directories are structured in a regular way, then it is possible
- to use the <directive module="mod_alias">AliasMatch</directive>
- directive to achieve the desired effect. For example, to make
- <code>http://www.example.com/upages/user/file.html</code> map to
- <code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code>, use the following
- <code>AliasMatch</code> directive:</p>
-
- <example>AliasMatch ^/upages/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/?(.*)
- /home/$1/public_html/$2</example>
- </section>
-
- <section id="redirect"><title>URL Redirection</title>
-
- <p>The configuration directives discussed in the above sections
- tell Apache to get content from a specific place in the filesystem
- and return it to the client. Sometimes, it is desirable instead to
- inform the client that the requested content is located at a
- different URL, and instruct the client to make a new request with
- the new URL. This is called <em>redirection</em> and is
- implemented by the <directive
- module="mod_alias">Redirect</directive> directive. For example, if
- the contents of the directory <code>/foo/</code> under the
- <directive module="core">DocumentRoot</directive> are moved
- to the new directory <code>/bar/</code>, you can instruct clients
- to request the content at the new location as follows:</p>
-
- <example>Redirect permanent /foo/
- http://www.example.com/bar/</example>
-
- <p>This will redirect any URL-Path starting in
- <code>/foo/</code> to the same URL path on the
- <code>www.example.com</code> server with <code>/bar/</code>
- substituted for <code>/foo/</code>. You can redirect clients to
- any server, not only the origin server.</p>
-
- <p>Apache also provides a <directive
- module="mod_alias">RedirectMatch</directive> directive for more
- complicated rewriting problems. For example, to redirect requests
- for the site home page to a different site, but leave all other
- requests alone, use the following configuration:</p>
-
- <example>RedirectMatch permanent ^/$
- http://www.example.com/startpage.html</example>
-
- <p>Alternatively, to temporarily redirect all pages on one site
- to a particular page on another site, use the following:</p>
-
- <example>RedirectMatch temp .*
- http://othersite.example.com/startpage.html</example>
- </section>
-
- <section id="proxy"><title>Reverse Proxy</title>
-
- <p>Apache also allows you to bring remote documents into the URL space
- of the local server. This technique is called <em>reverse
- proxying</em> because the web server acts like a proxy server by
- fetching the documents from a remote server and returning them to the
- client. It is different from normal proxying because, to the client,
- it appears the documents originate at the reverse proxy server.</p>
-
- <p>In the following example, when clients request documents under the
- <code>/foo/</code> directory, the server fetches those documents from
- the <code>/bar/</code> directory on <code>internal.example.com</code>
- and returns them to the client as if they were from the local
- server.</p>
-
- <example>
- ProxyPass /foo/ http://internal.example.com/bar/<br />
- ProxyPassReverse /foo/ http://internal.example.com/bar/
- </example>
-
- <p>The <directive module="mod_proxy">ProxyPass</directive> configures
- the server to fetch the appropriate documents, while the
- <directive module="mod_proxy">ProxyPassReverse</directive>
- directive rewrites redirects originating at
- <code>internal.example.com</code> so that they target the appropriate
- directory on the local server. It is important to note, however, that
- links inside the documents will not be rewritten. So any absolute
- links on <code>internal.example.com</code> will result in the client
- breaking out of the proxy server and requesting directly from
- <code>internal.example.com</code>.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="rewrite"><title>Rewriting Engine</title>
-
- <p>When even more powerful substitution is required, the rewriting
- engine provided by <module>mod_rewrite</module>
- can be useful. The directives provided by this module use
- characteristics of the request such as browser type or source IP
- address in deciding from where to serve content. In addition,
- mod_rewrite can use external database files or programs to
- determine how to handle a request. The rewriting engine is capable
- of performing all three types of mappings discussed above:
- internal redirects (aliases), external redirects, and proxying.
- Many practical examples employing mod_rewrite are discussed in the
- <a href="misc/rewriteguide.html">URL Rewriting Guide</a>.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="notfound"><title>File Not Found</title>
-
- <p>Inevitably, URLs will be requested for which no matching
- file can be found in the filesystem. This can happen for
- several reasons. In some cases, it can be a result of moving
- documents from one location to another. In this case, it is
- best to use <a href="#redirect">URL redirection</a> to inform
- clients of the new location of the resource. In this way, you
- can assure that old bookmarks and links will continue to work,
- even though the resource is at a new location.</p>
-
- <p>Another common cause of "File Not Found" errors is
- accidental mistyping of URLs, either directly in the browser,
- or in HTML links. Apache provides the module
- <module>mod_speling</module> (sic) to help with
- this problem. When this module is activated, it will intercept
- "File Not Found" errors and look for a resource with a similar
- filename. If one such file is found, mod_speling will send an
- HTTP redirect to the client informing it of the correct
- location. If several "close" files are found, a list of
- available alternatives will be presented to the client.</p>
-
- <p>An especially useful feature of mod_speling, is that it will
- compare filenames without respect to case. This can help
- systems where users are unaware of the case-sensitive nature of
- URLs and the unix filesystem. But using mod_speling for
- anything more than the occasional URL correction can place
- additional load on the server, since each "incorrect" request
- is followed by a URL redirection and a new request from the
- client.</p>
-
- <p>If all attempts to locate the content fail, Apache returns
- an error page with HTTP status code 404 (file not found). The
- appearance of this page is controlled with the
- <directive module="core">ErrorDocument</directive> directive
- and can be customized in a flexible manner as discussed in the
- <a href="custom-error.html">Custom error responses</a> and <a
- href="misc/custom_errordocs.html">International Server Error
- Responses</a> documents.</p>
- </section>
-
- </manualpage>
-