Content negotiation for extensionless URLs?

[mdmcginn]

In the spirit of Tim Berners-Lee's article Cool URIs don't change, I'm interested in using content negotiation in my .htaccess file, so that I can leave off extensions from my URLs. For example, so I can use "mysite.com/about" instead of "mysite.com/about.htm"

This was suggested for my .htacess file:

<Directory /home/user/public_html>
Options + MultiViews
</Directory>

But it gives a Error 500 Internal Server Error.

Website Optimization suggests two options: "Type maps contain paths to the variants of each MIME type to express a server-side preference for resources. The MultiViews option expresses no server-side preference and effectively fakes a type map file from searching the directory for files with MIME type extensions."

Any other suggestions? Am I going to succeed in doing this?

[Elite]

You could try modrewrite (untested):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.htm [L,QSA]

[ZYV]

First I see an undeeded space, should be "+Multiviews" IMHO. And remove this <Directoty ...> wrapper.

I've tried and

[b].htaccess[/b]
Options +MultiViews

works on cpanel16.

P.S. mod_rewrite solution will work, but please avoid using mod_rewrite per-directory when it is not absolutely necessary, as it is a rather ressource-hungry Apache module.

[Elite]

P.S. mod_rewrite solution will work, but please avoid using mod_rewrite per-directory when it is not absolutely necessary, as it is a rather ressource-hungry Apache module.

Fair point

[mdmcginn]

Thanks so much!

I added the line "Options +MultiViews" to my .htaccess file. That got it working with URLS such as mysite.com/index/ (I had to add a slash at the end) but then my relative links stopped working. Adding <base href="http://mysite.com/" /> fixed that.

[ZYV]

Glad you sorted it out

[mdmcginn]

Not exactly. This leaves me with several URLs pointing to the same content (and Google doesn't like duplicate content).

The mod_rewrite solution suggested by Elite gives error 500. But of course, he said it was untested. Once I removed the QSA flag, it works for mydomain.com/filename, and works for mydomain.com/filename.htm (so that's duplicate content). It gives error 500 for mydomain.com/filename/ (adding the slash) and mydomain.com/filename/more. To avoid duplicate content, I don't want those last two options to work anyway, but I think error 404 is better than 500 for this.

My MultiViews htaccess file (below) allows all four URL patterns, giving me four cases of duplicate content!

ErrorDocument 404 /404.shtml
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php .htm
Options +FollowSymlinks
Options +MultiViews
AddDefaultCharset On

So I need rules that will force only one URL pattern to work, probably mydomain.com/filename/ But I also want to force mydomain.com to redirect to www.mydomain.com (to maximize Google Page Rank and minimize duplicate content penalties). So that rewrite rule needs to work with any others.

[ZYV]

Not sure that MultiViews solution will work in such a complex case, leaving you with the mod_rewrite option. Read the mod_rewrite guide and docs, everything is there. All you need is to make a final decision on which URLs you want to use and come up with several regexp's for RewriteRules.

[mdmcginn]

Here's the solution from http://forum.modrewrite.com/, assuming all my files end with html:

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews

RewriteEngine On

# force www.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

# redirect *.htm, *.html and * (with no trailing slash)
# if a .html file exists to */
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/[^\.]+)$ [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/.+)\.html?$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%1.html -f
RewriteRule .*[^/] %1/ [R=301,L]

# */ --> *.html, internally
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ /$1.html [QSA,L]