Are these 3 redirect rules equal?

Are these 3 redirect rules equal? - .htaccess files are extremely useful in many cases for users who either do not have root permissions or for users who simply aren't comfortable in making changes in their web server's configuration file. Trying to debug .htaccess not working isn't always the easiest thing to do, however, hopefully by checking the discuss below mentioned about htaccess, redirects, https, mod-rewrite, .htaccess common problems as well as the troubleshooting tips, you'll have a better grasp on what you may have to modify to get your .htaccess file running smoothly.Problem :

I would like to redirect the non-https and non-www versions my domain to the https and www version of it. I'm a bit confused by the options. Are these redirect rules equal for my purpose?

#  REDIRECT (non-HTTPS or non-WWW) TO HTTPS and WWW
RewriteCond %HTTPS off [OR]
RewriteCond %HTTP_HOST !^www. [NC]
# Are the following 3 rules equal in effect?
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com%REQUEST_URI [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%HTTP_HOST/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%HTTP_HOSTREQUEST_URI [R=301,L]

Which one should I use?

Solution :

1. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com%REQUEST_URI [L,R=301]
   2. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%HTTP_HOST/$1 [R=301,L]
   3. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%HTTP_HOSTREQUEST_URI [R=301,L]

These 3 rules are essentially the same and will do the same job in most situations, however, #1 is arguably "better" as it canonicalises a FQDN (where the hostname ends in a dot) and would therefore be the preferred version. (Assuming you have no other directives that do this.)

In a .htaccess context, where the .htaccess file is located in the document root then #2 and #3 are identical. (However, in a server or virtual host context then #2 is technically incorrect, as it would result in a double slash after the hostname.)

If the .htaccess was located in a subdirectory then rule #2 would not be correct as it would omit the subdirectory from the redirect. Either #1 or #3 (that use REQUEST_URI) would be required here.

All 3 versions (together with the RewriteCond directive) assume you have no other subdomains, since anything other than www. is redirected.

1. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com%REQUEST_URI [L,R=301]

• There is no need for a capturing subpattern (denoted by the surrounding parentheses) in the regex if there is no backreference (eg. $1) in the substition. You are using the REQUEST_URI server variable instead.


• The regex .* could also be simplified and made more efficient, since you don't need to match anything, you just need to be successful for everything. The regex .* traverses the entire URL-path and matches everything. Whereas a regex like ^ simply asserts the start-of-string, so is immediately successful without actually matching anything.


• The order of the flags L and R do not matter. However, for consistency, I always include the L (last) flag last.

In other words:

RewriteRule ^ https://www.example.com%REQUEST_URI [R=301,L]

Additionally, if you would like to do some further testing, give the htaccess tester tool a try. It allows you to specify a certain URL as well as the rules you would like to include and then shows which rules were tested, which ones met the criteria, and which ones were executed.