mod_alias Provides for mapping different parts of the host filesystem in the document tree and for URL redirection Base mod_alias.c alias_module

The directives contained in this module allow for manipulation and control of URLs as requests arrive at the server. The Alias and ScriptAlias directives are used to map between URLs and filesystem paths. This allows for content which is not directly under the DocumentRoot served as part of the web document tree. The ScriptAlias directive has the additional effect of marking the target directory as containing only CGI scripts.

The Redirect directives are used to instruct clients to make a new request with a different URL. They are often used when a resource has moved to a new location.

mod_alias is designed to handle simple URL manipulation tasks. For more complicated tasks such as manipulating the query string, use the tools provided by mod_rewrite.

 mod_rewrite Mapping URLs to the filesystem
Order of Processing

Aliases and Redirects occuring in different contexts are processed like other directives according to standard merging rules. But when multiple Aliases or Redirects occur in the same context (for example, in the same VirtualHost section) they are processed in a particular order.

First, all Redirects are processed before Aliases are processed, and therefore a request that matches a Redirect or RedirectMatch will never have Aliases applied. Second, the Aliases and Redirects are processed in the order they appear in the configuration files, with the first match taking precedence.

For this reason, when two or more of these directives apply to the same sub-path, you must list the most specific path first in order for all the directives to have an effect. For example, the following configuration will work as expected:

Alias /foo/bar /baz
Alias /foo /gaq

But if the above two directives were reversed in order, the /foo Alias would always match before the /foo/bar Alias, so the latter directive would be ignored.

Alias Maps URLs to filesystem locations Alias URL-path file-path|directory-path server configvirtual host

The Alias directive allows documents to be stored in the local filesystem other than under the DocumentRoot. URLs with a (%-decoded) path beginning with url-path will be mapped to local files beginning with directory-path. The url-path is case-sensitive, even on case-insenitive file systems.

Example: Alias /image /ftp/pub/image

A request for http://myserver/image/foo.gif would cause the server to return the file /ftp/pub/image/foo.gif.

Note that if you include a trailing / on the url-path then the server will require a trailing / in order to expand the alias. That is, if you use

Alias /icons/ /usr/local/apache/icons/

then the url /icons will not be aliased.

Note that you may need to specify additional Directory sections which cover the destination of aliases. Aliasing occurs before Directory sections are checked, so only the destination of aliases are affected. (Note however Location sections are run through once before aliases are performed, so they will apply.)

In particular, if you are creating an Alias to a directory outside of your DocumentRoot, you may need to explicitly permit access to the target directory.

Example: Alias /image /ftp/pub/image
<Directory /ftp/pub/image>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
 </Directory> AliasMatch Maps URLs to filesystem locations using regular expressions AliasMatch regex file-path|directory-path server configvirtual host

This directive is equivalent to Alias, but makes use of standard regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The supplied regular expression is matched against the URL-path, and if it matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given string and use it as a filename. For example, to activate the /icons directory, one might use:

AliasMatch ^/icons(.*) /usr/local/apache/icons$1

It is also possible to construct an alias with case-insensitive matching of the url-path:

AliasMatch (?i)^/image(.*) /ftp/pub/image$1 Redirect Sends an external redirect asking the client to fetch a different URL Redirect [status] URL-path URL server configvirtual host directory.htaccess FileInfo

The Redirect directive maps an old URL into a new one by asking the client to refetch the resource at the new location.

The old URL-path is a case-sensitive (%-decoded) path beginning with a slash. A relative path is not allowed. The new URL should be an absolute URL beginning with a scheme and hostname.

Example: Redirect /service http://foo2.bar.com/service

If the client requests http://myserver/service/foo.txt, it will be told to access http://foo2.bar.com/service/foo.txt instead.

Note

Redirect directives take precedence over Alias and ScriptAlias directives, irrespective of their ordering in the configuration file. Also, URL-path must be a fully qualified URL, not a relative path, even when used with .htaccess files or inside of Directory sections.

If no status argument is given, the redirect will be "temporary" (HTTP status 302). This indicates to the client that the resource has moved temporarily. The status argument can be used to return other HTTP status codes:

permanent
Returns a permanent redirect status (301) indicating that the resource has moved permanently.
temp
Returns a temporary redirect status (302). This is the default.
seeother
Returns a "See Other" status (303) indicating that the resource has been replaced.
gone
Returns a "Gone" status (410) indicating that the resource has been permanently removed. When this status is used the URL argument should be omitted.

Other status codes can be returned by giving the numeric status code as the value of status. If the status is between 300 and 399, the URL argument must be present, otherwise it must be omitted. Note that the status must be known to the Apache code (see the function send_error_response in http_protocol.c).

Example: Redirect permanent /one http://example.com/two
Redirect 303 /three http://example.com/other RedirectMatch Sends an external redirect based on a regular expression match of the current URL RedirectMatch [status] regex URL server configvirtual host directory.htaccess FileInfo

This directive is equivalent to Redirect, but makes use of standard regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The supplied regular expression is matched against the URL-path, and if it matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given string and use it as a filename. For example, to redirect all GIF files to like-named JPEG files on another server, one might use:

RedirectMatch (.*)\.gif$ http://www.anotherserver.com$1.jpg RedirectTemp Sends an external temporary redirect asking the client to fetch a different URL RedirectTemp URL-path URL server configvirtual host directory.htaccess FileInfo

This directive makes the client know that the Redirect is only temporary (status 302). Exactly equivalent to Redirect temp.

 RedirectPermanent Sends an external permanent redirect asking the client to fetch a different URL RedirectPermanent URL-path URL server configvirtual host directory.htaccess FileInfo

This directive makes the client know that the Redirect is permanent (status 301). Exactly equivalent to Redirect permanent.

 ScriptAlias Maps a URL to a filesystem location and designates the target as a CGI script ScriptAlias URL-path file-path|directory-path server configvirtual host

The ScriptAlias directive has the same behavior as the Alias directive, except that in addition it marks the target directory as containing CGI scripts that will be processed by mod_cgi's cgi-script handler. URLs with a case-sensitive (%-decoded) path beginning with URL-path will be mapped to scripts beginning with the second argument, which is a full pathname in the local filesystem.

Example: ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /web/cgi-bin/

A request for http://myserver/cgi-bin/foo would cause the server to run the script /web/cgi-bin/foo. This configuration is essentially equivalent to:

Alias /cgi-bin/ /web/cgi-bin/
<Location /cgi-bin >
SetHandler cgi-script
Options +ExecCGI
 </Location> It is safer to avoid placing CGI scripts under the DocumentRoot in order to avoid accidentally revealing their source code if the configuration is ever changed. The ScriptAlias makes this easy by mapping a URL and designating CGI scripts at the same time. If you do choose to place your CGI scripts in a directory already accessible from the web, do not use ScriptAlias. Instead, use Directory, SetHandler, and Options as in: <Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/cgi-bin >
SetHandler cgi-script
Options ExecCGI
 </Directory> This is necessary since multiple URL-paths can map to the same filesystem location, potentially bypassing the ScriptAlias and revealing the source code of the CGI scripts if they are not restricted by a Directory section. CGI Tutorial ScriptAliasMatch Maps a URL to a filesystem location using a regular expression and designates the target as a CGI script ScriptAliasMatch regex file-path|directory-path server configvirtual host

This directive is equivalent to ScriptAlias, but makes use of standard regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The supplied regular expression is matched against the URL-path, and if it matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given string and use it as a filename. For example, to activate the standard /cgi-bin, one might use:

ScriptAliasMatch ^/cgi-bin(.*) /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin$1