CakePHP subdomains with htaccess

Question

I've used the following rules in my htaccess file in other applications to redirect users from a folder to a subdomain but load the content from that folder when accessing that subdomain.

# REWRITE SUBDOMAIN TO FOLDER
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^admin\.cameron\.com$
RewriteRule !^admin/? admin%{REQUEST_URI} [NC,L]

# REWRITE FOLDER TO SUBDOMAIN
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/admin/([^\s]*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://admin.cameron.com/%1 [R=301,L]

So if I go to: http://cameron.com/admin I end up on http://admin.cameron.com/

But the content is loaded from http://cameron.com/admin

However this doesn't work for CakePHP 2.x because of its rewriting apparently...

In my htaccess file in /app/webroot I have:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

    RewriteEngine On

    # CAKEPHP RULES
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

    # REWRITE SUBDOMAIN TO FOLDER
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^admin\.cameron\.com$
    RewriteRule !^admin/? admin%{REQUEST_URI} [NC,L]

    # REWRITE FOLDER TO SUBDOMAIN
    RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/admin/([^\s]*) [NC]
    RewriteRule ^ http://admin.cameron.com/%1 [R=301,L]

</IfModule>

If I go to: http://cameron.com/admin it just tries to load the AdminController and doesn't redirect you, and if I go to: http://admin.cameron.com/ I just get a 500 Internal Server Error.

Any ideas on how to get this working for CakePHP?

If I'm right, do you just want to change the url to point to that of the subdomain? — Daniel
Try adding this statement RewriteBase /app/webroot after the RewriteEngine On in your webroot .htaccess file — SoftwareCarpenter

aeryaguzov aeryaguzov · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-13T12:52:24

CakePHP and almost any other PHP framework parse $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] in order to route your request to particular controller

more info here: https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/blob/2.6/lib/Cake/Network/CakeRequest.php#L230 ,

so you simply need to have the SAME request URI parameters for your redirect to get app working.

For your old location it was "/admin", for new location it should be the same, but you do not want to pass it, so it is better to change the task like this:

"When you go to admin.site.com you will be redirected to site.com/admin".

This can be done simply like this:

RewriteRule ^([^.]+)\.example\.com http://example.com/$1

It is not a working example of rule because you also need to rewrite subdomain's request URI to to get everything working and it depends on your requirements, but can be smth like this:

RewriteRule ^([^.]+)\.example\.com(.*) http://example.com/$1/$2

UPD: real example

$ cat app/webroot/.htaccess 
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^admin.example.com
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/admin/$1 [P,L,NC]
</IfModule>

CakePHP subdomains with htaccess

2 Answers