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<title>Dynamic mass virtual hosts with mod_rewrite - Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4</title>
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<p>This document supplements the <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code>
<a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">reference documentation</a>. It describes
how you can use <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> to create dynamically
configured virtual hosts.</p>

<div class="warning"><code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> is usually not the best way to configure
virtual hosts. You should first consider the <a href="../vhosts/mass.html">alternatives</a> before resorting to
mod_rewrite. See also the "<a href="avoid.html#vhosts">how to avoid
mod_rewrite</a> document.</div>

</div>
<div id="quickview"><ul id="toc"><li><img alt="" src="../../images/down.gif"> <a href="#per-hostname">Virtual Hosts For Arbitrary Hostnames</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../../images/down.gif"> <a href="#simple.rewrite">Dynamic
    Virtual Hosts Using <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code></a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../../images/down.gif"> <a href="#xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual Host Configuration File</a></li>
</ul><h3>See also</h3><ul class="seealso"><li><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">Module documentation</a></li><li><a href="intro.html">mod_rewrite introduction</a></li><li><a href="remapping.html">Redirection and remapping</a></li><li><a href="htaccess.html">Per-directory Rewrites</a></li><li><a href="flags.html">RewriteRule Flags</a></li><li><a href="rewritemap.html">RewriteMap</a></li><li><a href="avoid.html">When not to use mod_rewrite</a></li><li><a href="tech.html">Technical details</a></li></ul></div>
<div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../../images/up.gif"></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2 id="per-hostname">Virtual Hosts For Arbitrary Hostnames <a title="Permanent link" href="#per-hostname" class="permalink">&para;</a></h2>

<dl>
    <dt>Description:</dt>

<dd>
    <p>We want to automatically create a virtual host for every hostname
    which resolves in our domain, without having to create
    new VirtualHost sections.</p>

<p>In this recipe, we assume that we'll be using the hostname
    <code><strong>SITE</strong>.example.com</code> for each
    user, and serve their content out of
    <code>/home/<strong>SITE</strong>/www</code>. However, we want
    <code>www.example.com</code> to be omitted from this mapping.</p>
    </dd>

<dt>Solution:</dt>

<dd>

<pre class="prettyprint lang-config">RewriteEngine on

RewriteMap    lowercase int:tolower

RewriteCond   %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteCond   ${lowercase:%{<strong>HTTP_HOST</strong>}}   ^<strong>([^.]+)</strong>\.example\.com$
RewriteRule   ^(.*)    /home/<strong>%1</strong>/www$1</pre>
</dd>

<dt>Discussion</dt>
    <dd>

<div class="warning">You will need to take care of the DNS
    resolution - Apache does
    not handle name resolution. You'll need either to create CNAME
    records for each hostname, or a DNS wildcard record. Creating DNS
    records is beyond the scope of this document.</div>

<p>The internal <code>tolower</code> RewriteMap directive is used to
ensure that the hostnames being used are all lowercase, so that there is
no ambiguity in the directory structure which must be created.</p>

<p>Parentheses used in a <code class="directive"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritecond">RewriteCond</a></code> are captured into the
backreferences <code>%1</code>, <code>%2</code>, etc, while parentheses
used in <code class="directive"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule">RewriteRule</a></code> are
captured into the backreferences <code>$1</code>, <code>$2</code>,
etc.</p>

<p>The first <code>RewriteCond</code> checks to see if the hostname
starts with <code>www.</code>, and if it does, the rewriting is
skipped.</p>

<p>
As with many techniques discussed in this document, <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> really
isn't the best way to accomplish this task. You should, instead,
consider using <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_vhost_alias.html">mod_vhost_alias</a></code> instead, as it will much
more gracefully handle anything beyond serving static files, such as any
dynamic content, and Alias resolution.
</p>
    </dd>
  </dl>

</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../../images/up.gif"></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2 id="simple.rewrite">Dynamic
    Virtual Hosts Using <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> <a title="Permanent link" href="#simple.rewrite" class="permalink">&para;</a></h2>

<p>This extract from <code>apache2.conf</code> does the same
    thing as <a href="#per-hostname">the first example</a>. The first
    half is very similar to the corresponding part above, except for
    some changes, required for backward compatibility and to make the
    <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> part work properly; the second half
    configures <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> to do the actual work.</p>

<p>Because <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> runs before other URI translation
    modules (e.g., <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_alias.html">mod_alias</a></code>), <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> must
    be told to explicitly ignore any URLs that would have been handled
    by those modules. And, because these rules would otherwise bypass
    any <code>ScriptAlias</code> directives, we must have
    <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> explicitly enact those mappings.</p>

<pre class="prettyprint lang-config"># get the server name from the Host: header
UseCanonicalName Off

# splittable logs
LogFormat "%{Host}i %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon
CustomLog "logs/access_log" vcommon

&lt;Directory "/www/hosts"&gt;
    # ExecCGI is needed here because we can't force
    # CGI execution in the way that ScriptAlias does
    Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
&lt;/Directory&gt;

RewriteEngine On

# a ServerName derived from a Host: header may be any case at all
RewriteMap  lowercase  "int:tolower"

## deal with normal documents first:
# allow Alias /icons/ to work - repeat for other aliases
RewriteCond  "%{REQUEST_URI}"  "!^/icons/"
# allow CGIs to work
RewriteCond  "%{REQUEST_URI}"  "!^/cgi-bin/"
# do the magic
RewriteRule  "^/(.*)$"         "/www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/docs/$1"

## and now deal with CGIs - we have to force a handler
RewriteCond  "%{REQUEST_URI}"  "^/cgi-bin/"
RewriteRule  "^/(.*)$"         "/www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/cgi-bin/$1"  [H=cgi-script]</pre>

</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../../images/up.gif"></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2 id="xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual Host Configuration File <a title="Permanent link" href="#xtra-conf" class="permalink">&para;</a></h2>

<p>This arrangement uses more advanced <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code>
    features to work out the translation from virtual host to document
    root, from a separate configuration file. This provides more
    flexibility, but requires more complicated configuration.</p>

<p>The <code>vhost.map</code> file should look something like
    this:</p>

<div class="example"><p><code>
customer-1.example.com  /www/customers/1<br>
customer-2.example.com  /www/customers/2<br>
# ...<br>
customer-N.example.com  /www/customers/N<br>
</code></p></div>

<p>The <code>apache2.conf</code> should contain the following:</p>

<pre class="prettyprint lang-config">RewriteEngine on

RewriteMap   lowercase  "int:tolower"

# define the map file
RewriteMap   vhost      "txt:/www/conf/vhost.map"

# deal with aliases as above
RewriteCond  "%{REQUEST_URI}"               "!^/icons/"
RewriteCond  "%{REQUEST_URI}"               "!^/cgi-bin/"
RewriteCond  "${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}"  "^(.+)$"
# this does the file-based remap
RewriteCond  "${vhost:%1}"                  "^(/.*)$"
RewriteRule  "^/(.*)$"                      "%1/docs/$1"

RewriteCond  "%{REQUEST_URI}"               "^/cgi-bin/"
RewriteCond  "${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}"  "^(.+)$"
RewriteCond  "${vhost:%1}"                  "^(/.*)$"
RewriteRule  "^/cgi-bin/(.*)$"                      "%1/cgi-bin/$1" [H=cgi-script]</pre>

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