Keep URL encoding after .htaccess rewrite

Question

I have the following .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

# Rewrite www.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Suppose my domain is foo.com. If I open http://foo.com/something, it will be redirected to http://www.foo.com/something. This works nicely, except when something contains any url encoded characters.

If I open http://www.foo.com/bar/file-with-%3F-in-name, the REQUEST_URI is /bar/file-with-%3F-in-name.

If I open http://foo.com/bar/file-with-%3F-in-name, however, the url encoded %3F is decoded to ? during rewrite, and the REQUEST_URI becomes /bar/file-with- with the QUERY_STRING -in-name.

How can I keep the url encoded characters from being decoded during rewrite?

I've tried using the B and NE flags, but without luck.

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-22 12:11:43Z

1

Here is version of rule that will solve your problem:

# Rewrite www.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/+(\S*)\sHTTP
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/%1 [L,R=301,NE]

Trick is to grab the request URI from THE_REQUEST variable before it gets decoded by Apache.
NE is still needed to avoid %3F becoming %253F

It was my mistake earlier that I didn't interpret question correctly.

answered Nov 22, 2016 at 12:11

anubhava

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