cookies .htaccess & mod_rewrite

[BornOnline]

Can anyone give me an example of using .htaccess to look for a specific cookie and if the cookie is not present send that visitor to a specific URL?

Thanks for any info. I'm searching, but have not found what I'm looking for and thought I would ask :D

[DavidP]

Why not just do that using php?

[asterisk]

Yeah I agree with DavidP - while you can definitely do that with htaccess and mod_rewrite, I find PHP to be a much cleaner implementation. The former tends to require some basic knowledge of regular expressions which can be a bit messy at times if you're not quite comfortable with it.

[BornOnline]

Good question.. I guess it's because I don't know how :D

Why not just do that using php?

[sdjl]

Here's something basic in PHP:


<?php

// Look for cookie with a name of hello and see that it DOESNT exist first.
if(!$_COOKIE['hello']) {
// The cookie doesn't exist, send visitor to the following URL
Header("Location: http://www.domain.com/url.php");
Exit;
} else {
// The cookie exists
// Put code here or escape PHP and put HTML here.

}

?>


This can obviously be expanded to do whatever you need.

David

[dmspilot]

I disagree, using mod_rewrite would be cleaner than a PHP script.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(cookiename)
RewriteRule .* newpage.html [R]

If you need further help:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html
http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/apache/mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet/

[sdjl]

Why would it be cleaner? Sure it would be intercepted at the apache stage instead of the PHP stage, but with regards to cleanness, they're equal :)

David

[asterisk]

I apologise. I was thinking 'human-readable' when I wrote 'clean implementation'.

Oh don't forget...

RewriteEngine on

...at the beginning. Something like this should do the trick:


# Tells Apache to follow symbolic links. (Switch this to -FollowSymlinks if this account in
# which htaccess resides in belongs to another user instead for security purposes)
Options FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

# Performs the following if cookie is found with non-case-sensitive name, cookiename.
# Rewrites any existing URL to the following new address and redirect, plus ensures
# no further rewrite rules are executed after this.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(cookiename) [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.anotherURL.com/cookienotpresent.htm [R, L]


I just like my code to preferably be human-readable even without comments... like the way sdjl did it with PHP. Easy to read and absolutely beautiful with little room for error. Mod_rewrite can be pretty nasty if you miss out a flag or two, or some odd regexp symbol. Gah.

[sdjl]

Asterisk, my reply was referencing dmspilot, i'd failed to see you wrote a pretty similar response!
I too like to write code with comments, unless it's really needed.

Just a quick note, your code will be applicable to the entire website, no matter which page is called, correct?
If so, is there a version which only applies to a certain page, just incase the original questioner wants that :)

David

[BornOnline]

Thanks for all the info guys!

I really appreciate it.

Hmm.. this is what I'm currently using. It's working, but if someone hits like /blah/ and not /blah using the last backslash the rule does not work. I'll go do some more reading on this.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !TehCookie [NC]
RewriteRule /blah/* /blah/blah.php?config=&blah=pass&pass=blah_options

[asterisk]

sdjl, sounds like you were absolutely right on the mark about the OP wanting it to be applied to a certain location. :)

Yeah the original applies to the entire website.

For a specific location, you'd want to do:


# Tells Apache to follow symbolic links. (Switch this to -FollowSymlinks if this account in
# which htaccess resides in belongs to another user instead for security purposes)
Options FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

# Performs the following if cookie is found with non-case-sensitive name, cookiename.
# Redirects all user-requested URLs at /blah or /blah/ to the following
# PHP file and redirect, plus ensures no further rewrite rules are
# executed after this.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !TehCookie [NC]
RewriteRule ^/blah(/)?$ /blah/blah.php?config=&blah=pass&pass=blah_options&dpp=0z [R, L]