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18<p class="apache">Apache HTTP Server Version 2.2</p>
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20<div class="up"><a href="./"><img title="&lt;-" alt="&lt;-" src="/images/left.gif" /></a></div>
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22<a href="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</a> &gt; <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/">HTTP Server</a> &gt; <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/">Documentation</a> &gt; <a href="../">Version 2.2</a> &gt; <a href="./">Rewrite</a></div><div id="page-content"><div id="preamble"><h1>Dynamic mass virtual hosts with mod_rewrite</h1>
23<div class="toplang">
24<p><span>Available Languages: </span><a href="/en/rewrite/vhosts.html" title="English">&nbsp;en&nbsp;</a></p>
25</div>
26
27
28<p>This document supplements the <code class="module"><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> 
29<a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">reference documentation</a>. It describes
30how you can use <code class="module"><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> to create dynamically 
31configured virtual hosts.</p>
32
33<div class="warning">mod_rewrite is not the best way to configure
34virtual hosts. You should first consider the <a href="/vhosts/mass.html">alternatives</a> before resorting to
35mod_rewrite. See also the "<a href="avoid.html#vhosts">how to avoid
36mod_rewrite</a> document.</div>
37
38</div>
39<div id="quickview"><ul id="toc"><li><img alt="" src="/images/down.gif" /> <a href="#per-hostname">Virtual Hosts For Arbitrary Hostnames</a></li>
40<li><img alt="" src="/images/down.gif" /> <a href="#simple.rewrite">Dynamic
41    Virtual Hosts Using <code class="module"><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code></a></li>
42<li><img alt="" src="/images/down.gif" /> <a href="#xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual Host Configuration File</a></li>
43</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="access.html">Controlling access</a></li><li><a href="proxy.html">Proxying</a></li><li><a href="rewritemap.html">RewriteMap</a></li><li><a href="advanced.html">Advanced techniques and tricks</a></li><li><a href="avoid.html">When not to use mod_rewrite</a></li></ul><ul class="seealso"><li><a href="#comments_section">Comments</a></li></ul></div>
44<div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="/images/up.gif" /></a></div>
45<div class="section">
46<h2><a name="per-hostname" id="per-hostname">Virtual Hosts For Arbitrary Hostnames</a></h2>
47
48  
49
50  <dl>
51    <dt>Description:</dt>
52
53    <dd>
54    <p>We want to automatically create a virtual host for every hostname
55    which resolves in our domain, without having to create
56    new VirtualHost sections.</p>
57
58    <p>In this recipe, we assume that we'll be using the hostname
59    <code>www.<strong>SITE</strong>.example.com</code> for each
60    user, and serve their content out of
61    <code>/home/<strong>SITE</strong>/www</code>.</p>
62    </dd>
63
64    <dt>Solution:</dt>
65
66    <dd>
67
68<div class="example"><p><code>
69RewriteEngine on<br />
70<br />
71RewriteMap    lowercase int:tolower<br />
72<br />
73RewriteCond   %{lowercase:%{<strong>HTTP_HOST</strong>}}   ^www\.<strong>([^.]+)</strong>\.example\.com$<br />
74RewriteRule   ^(.*) /home/<strong>%1</strong>/www$1
75</code></p></div></dd>
76
77<dt>Discussion</dt>
78    <dd>
79
80    <div class="warning">You will need to take care of the DNS 
81    resolution - Apache does
82    not handle name resolution. You'll need either to create CNAME 
83    records for each hostname, or a DNS wildcard record. Creating DNS
84    records is beyond the scope of this document.</div>
85
86<p>The internal <code>tolower</code> RewriteMap directive is used to
87ensure that the hostnames being used are all lowercase, so that there is
88no ambiguity in the directory structure which must be created.</p>
89
90<p>Parentheses used in a <code class="directive"><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritecond">RewriteCond</a></code> are captured into the
91backreferences <code>%1</code>, <code>%2</code>, etc, while parentheses
92used in <code class="directive"><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule">RewriteRule</a></code> are
93captured into the backreferences <code>$1</code>, <code>$2</code>,
94etc.</p>
95
96<p>
97As with many techniques discussed in this document, mod_rewrite really
98isn't the best way to accomplish this task. You should, instead,
99consider using <code class="module"><a href="/mod/mod_vhost_alias.html">mod_vhost_alias</a></code> instead, as it will much
100more gracefully handle anything beyond serving static files, such as any
101dynamic content, and Alias resolution. 
102</p>
103    </dd>
104  </dl>
105
106</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="/images/up.gif" /></a></div>
107<div class="section">
108<h2><a name="simple.rewrite" id="simple.rewrite">Dynamic
109    Virtual Hosts Using <code class="module"><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code></a></h2>
110
111    <p>This extract from <code>httpd.conf</code> does the same
112    thing as <a href="#per-hostname">the first example</a>. The first
113    half is very similar to the corresponding part above, except for
114    some changes, required for backward compatibility and to make the
115    <code>mod_rewrite</code> part work properly; the second half
116    configures <code>mod_rewrite</code> to do the actual work.</p>
117
118    <p>Because <code>mod_rewrite</code> runs before other URI translation
119    modules (e.g., <code>mod_alias</code>), <code>mod_rewrite</code> must
120    be told to explicitly ignore any URLs that would have been handled
121    by those modules. And, because these rules would otherwise bypass
122    any <code>ScriptAlias</code> directives, we must have
123    <code>mod_rewrite</code> explicitly enact those mappings.</p>
124
125<div class="example"><p><code>
126# get the server name from the Host: header<br />
127UseCanonicalName Off<br />
128<br />
129# splittable logs<br />
130LogFormat "%{Host}i %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
131CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
132<br />
133&lt;Directory /www/hosts&gt;<br />
134<span class="indent">
135    # ExecCGI is needed here because we can't force<br />
136    # CGI execution in the way that ScriptAlias does<br />
137    Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI<br />
138</span>
139&lt;/Directory&gt;<br />
140<br />
141RewriteEngine On<br />
142<br />
143# a ServerName derived from a Host: header may be any case at all<br />
144RewriteMap  lowercase  int:tolower<br />
145<br />
146## deal with normal documents first:<br />
147# allow Alias /icons/ to work - repeat for other aliases<br />
148RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/icons/<br />
149# allow CGIs to work<br />
150RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/cgi-bin/<br />
151# do the magic<br />
152RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$  /www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/docs/$1<br />
153<br />
154## and now deal with CGIs - we have to force a handler<br />
155RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/cgi-bin/<br />
156RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$  /www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/cgi-bin/$1  [H=cgi-script]<br />
157</code></p></div>
158
159</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="/images/up.gif" /></a></div>
160<div class="section">
161<h2><a name="xtra-conf" id="xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual Host Configuration File</a></h2>
162
163    <p>This arrangement uses more advanced <code class="module"><a href="/mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code>
164    features to work out the translation from virtual host to document
165    root, from a separate configuration file. This provides more
166    flexibility, but requires more complicated configuration.</p>
167
168    <p>The <code>vhost.map</code> file should look something like
169    this:</p>
170
171<div class="example"><p><code>
172customer-1.example.com  /www/customers/1<br />
173customer-2.example.com  /www/customers/2<br />
174# ...<br />
175customer-N.example.com  /www/customers/N<br />
176</code></p></div>
177
178    <p>The <code>httpd.conf</code> should contain the following:</p>
179
180<div class="example"><p><code>
181RewriteEngine on<br />
182<br />
183RewriteMap   lowercase  int:tolower<br />
184<br />
185# define the map file<br />
186RewriteMap   vhost      txt:/www/conf/vhost.map<br />
187<br />
188# deal with aliases as above<br />
189RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               !^/icons/<br />
190RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               !^/cgi-bin/<br />
191RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^(.+)$<br />
192# this does the file-based remap<br />
193RewriteCond  ${vhost:%1}                  ^(/.*)$<br />
194RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$                      %1/docs/$1<br />
195<br />
196RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               ^/cgi-bin/<br />
197RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^(.+)$<br />
198RewriteCond  ${vhost:%1}                  ^(/.*)$<br />
199RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$                      %1/cgi-bin/$1 [H=cgi-script]
200</code></p></div>
201
202</div></div>
203<div class="bottomlang">
204<p><span>Available Languages: </span><a href="/en/rewrite/vhosts.html" title="English">&nbsp;en&nbsp;</a></p>
205</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img src="/images/up.gif" alt="top" /></a></div><div class="section"><h2><a id="comments_section" name="comments_section">Comments</a></h2><div class="warning"><strong>Notice:</strong><br />This is not a Q&amp;A section. Comments placed here should be pointed towards suggestions on improving the documentation or server, and may be removed again by our moderators if they are either implemented or considered invalid/off-topic. Questions on how to manage the Apache HTTP Server should be directed at either our IRC channel, #httpd, on Freenode, or sent to our <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/lists.html">mailing lists</a>.</div>
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