Apache :: DirectoryMatch expression detect subfolders

dsk8311 · Joined: 01 Feb 2022 Posts: 2

I currently have an .htaccess file in the site's DocumentRoot to control direct access to certain files.
Two other applications, each with its own .htaccess, are installed in subfolders (\app1 and \app2) but are impacted by the propagation of the parent's rules.

My goal is to move the root's .htaccess to the main Apache config with a condition to exclude them from applying to \app1 and \app2 subfolders.

I managed to detect the subfolders with a LocationMatch

tangent · Moderator Joined: 16 Aug 2020 Posts: 312 Location: UK

When working with complex regex constructs, I tend to use this site to check the logic - https://regex101.com. You need to escape forward slashes with this checker, so I tend to leave them in Apache configs.

Re your LocationMatch regex, I've simplified it with a case insensitive match, and character class set [12]. The boundary markers \b are needed to prevent the match picking up entries such as "app12" or "app212", and therefore don't believe you need the trailing slash, etc. after the negative lookahead assertion.

dsk8311 · Joined: 01 Feb 2022 Posts: 2

Thank you, that seems to do the trick.
However it seems that I need to escape the path separator slashes in the DEF_ROOT variable as well, which is not always practical (eg. D:\/SrvHome\/HTTPD\/Root).

I figured I could try encapsulating the condition within a ~m#[...]# block (as described in the documentation: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/expr.html#other) but that doesn't seem to be working:

tangent · Moderator Joined: 16 Aug 2020 Posts: 312 Location: UK

I think you have an extraneous tilde '~' at the start of your match, but that aside I don't think this construct will work here. It looks like DirectoryMatch requires a straight regex, and not the "m#regexp#" variant supported with expressions.

That said, in Apache the escape backslashes aren't actually needed in front of forward slashes, since Apache regex's are normally defined in a quoted string, rather than a Perl type match or substitute regex construct, which typically use a forward slash separator.

So your DirectoryMatch regex can actually be reduced to:

James Blond

You can also use https://www.debuggex.com/ to debug your regex or https://regexper.com/#%5E%28%5C%3Fi%29%24%7BDEF_ROOT%7D%5C%2Fmain_app%28%3F!%5C%2F%5Cbapp%5B12%5D%5Cb%29