Suppose in root directory I have one file (called index.php) and one folder (called caches).
I want that if the file exist in caches folder serve that file (caches/xxx.html) otherwise request send to index.php.
For example I will send request to server: https://example.com/how-to-do
and Apache search first in cache/. If how-to-do.html exists then send (rewrite Apache) how-to-do.html otherwise send request to index.php.
This my .htaccess:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
<IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
Options -MultiViews -Indexes
</IfModule>
RewriteEngine On
# Handle Authorization Header
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} .
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
# Redirect Trailing Slashes If Not A Folder...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [L,R=301]
# Send Requests To Front Controller...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>
Advertisement
Answer
Immediately before your last rule (ie. before the # Send Requests To Front Controller... comment) you can add something like the following:
# Check if cache file exists and serve from cache if it is
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/cache/$0.html -f
RewriteRule ^[^/.]+$ cache/$0.html [L]
This only checks for requests that target the document root, eg. /how-to-do – as in your example. It also assumes that your URL-path does not contain a dot (used to delimit file extensions). It does not target requests with multiple path segments, eg. /foo/bar.
To match multiple path segments then simply remove the slash from the regex character class. ie. ^[^.]+$.
The RewriteRule pattern ^[^/.]+$ matches any non-empty URL-path that does not contain the characters slash and dot. In other words it matches URL-paths that consist of a single path segment, excluding files (that naturally include a dot before the file extension). In .htaccess, the URL-path that is matched by the RewriteRule pattern does not start with a slash.
$0 is a backreference that contains the entire URL-path that is matched by the RewriteRule pattern (ie. ^[^/.]+$).
Reference
The official Apache docs should be your go to reference for this (although the docs are rather concise and somewhat lacking examples in places):