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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Rewrite engine</span></span>

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</style><div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">This article is about URL rewriting. For rewrite engines in mathematics and logic, see <a href="Rewrite_system" class="mw-redirect" title="Rewrite system">Rewrite system</a>. For other uses, see <a href="Rewrite_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="Rewrite (disambiguation)">Rewrite</a>.</div>

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<p>In <a href="Web_application" title="Web application">web applications</a>, a <b>rewrite engine</b> is a software component that performs <a href="Rewriting" title="Rewriting">rewriting</a> on <a href="URLs" class="mw-redirect" title="URLs">URLs</a> (Uniform Resource Locators), modifying their appearance. This modification is called <b>URL rewriting</b>. It is a way of implementing <a href="URL_mapping" class="mw-redirect" title="URL mapping">URL mapping</a> or routing within a <a href="Web_application" title="Web application">web application</a>. The engine is typically a component of a <a href="Web_server" title="Web server">web server</a> or <a href="Web_application_framework" class="mw-redirect" title="Web application framework">web application framework</a>. Rewritten URLs (sometimes known as <b>short</b>, <b>pretty</b> or <b>fancy URLs</b>, search engine friendly - <b>SEF</b> URLs, or <a href="Slug_(web_publishing)" class="mw-redirect" title="Slug (web publishing)">slugs</a>) are used to provide shorter and more relevant-looking links to web pages. The technique adds a layer of <a href="Abstraction" title="Abstraction">abstraction</a> between the files used to generate a web page and the URL that is presented to the outside world.

</p>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Usage">Usage</h2></div>

<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">See also: <a href="Semantic_URL" class="mw-redirect" title="Semantic URL">Semantic URL</a> and <a href="URL_shortening" title="URL shortening">URL shortening</a></div>

<p>Web sites with <a href="Dynamic_web_page" title="Dynamic web page">dynamic content</a> can use URLs that generate pages from the server using <a href="Query_string" title="Query string">query string</a> parameters. These are often rewritten to resemble URLs for <a href="Static_web_page" title="Static web page">static pages</a> on a site with a <a href="Folder_(computing)" class="mw-redirect" title="Folder (computing)">subdirectory hierarchy</a>. For example, the URL to a <a href="Wiki" title="Wiki">wiki</a> page with title <i>Rewrite_engine</i> might be:

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<pre>http://example.com/w/index.php?title=Rewrite_engine

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<p>but can be rewritten as:

</p>

<pre>http://example.com/wiki/Rewrite_engine

</pre>

<p>A <a href="Blog" title="Blog">blog</a> might have a URL that encodes the dates of each entry:

</p>

<pre>http://www.example.com/Blog/Posts.php?Year=2006&Month=12&Day=19

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<p>It can be altered like this:

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<pre>http://www.example.com/Blog/2006/12/19/

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<p>which also allows the user to change the URL to see all postings available in December, simply by removing the text encoding the day '19', as though navigating "up" a directory:

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<pre>http://www.example.com/Blog/2006/12/

</pre>

<p>A site can pass specialized terms from the URL to its <a href="Search_engine" title="Search engine">search engine</a> as a search term. This would allow users to search directly from their browser. For example, the URL as entered into the browser's <a href="Location_bar" class="mw-redirect" title="Location bar">location bar</a>:

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<pre>http://example.com/search term

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<p>will be <a href="Urlencode" class="mw-redirect" title="Urlencode">URL-encoded</a> by the browser before it makes the <a href="HTTP_request" class="mw-redirect" title="HTTP request">HTTP request</a>. The server could rewrite this to:

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<pre>http://example.com/search.php?q=search%20term

</pre>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Benefits_and_drawbacks">Benefits and drawbacks</h2></div>

<p>There are several benefits to using URL rewriting:<sup id="cite_ref-sidenote_1-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-sidenote-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

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<ul><li>The links are "cleaner" and more descriptive, improving their "friendliness" to both <a href="Usability" title="Usability">users</a> and <a href="Search_engine_optimization" title="Search engine optimization">search engines</a>.</li>

<li>They prevent undesired "<a href="Inline_linking" title="Inline linking">inline linking</a>", which can waste <a href="Bandwidth_(computing)" title="Bandwidth (computing)">bandwidth</a>.</li>

<li>The site can continue to use the same URLs even if the underlying technology used to serve them is changed (for example, switching to a new <a href="Blog_software" class="mw-redirect" title="Blog software">blogging engine</a>).</li></ul>

<p>There can, however be drawbacks as well; if a user wants to modify a URL to retrieve new data, <b>URL rewriting</b> may hinder the construction of custom queries due to the lack of named variables. For example, it may be difficult to determine the date from the following format:

</p>

<pre>http://www.example.com/Blog/06/04/02/

</pre>

<p>In this case, the original query string was more useful, since the query variables indicated month and day:

</p>

<pre>http://www.example.com/Blog/Posts.php?Year=06&Month=04&Day=02

</pre>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Web_frameworks">Web frameworks</h2></div>

<p>Many web frameworks include URL rewriting, either directly or through extension modules.

</p>

<ul><li><a href="Apache_HTTP_Server" title="Apache HTTP Server">Apache HTTP Server</a> has URL rewriting provided by the mod_rewrite module.<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-2"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>2<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li>URL Rewrite is available as an extension to <a href="Internet_Information_Services" title="Internet Information Services">Microsoft IIS</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li><a href="Ruby_on_Rails" title="Ruby on Rails">Ruby on Rails</a> has built-in URL rewriting via Routes.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-4"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>4<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li><a href="Jakarta_Servlet" title="Jakarta Servlet">Jakarta Servlet</a> has extendable URL rewriting via the OCPsoft URLRewriteFilter and Tuckey UrlRewriteFilter.</li>

<li><a href="Jakarta_Faces" title="Jakarta Faces">Jakarta Faces</a> has simplified URL rewriting via the PrettyFaces: URLRewriteFilter.</li>

<li><a href="Django_(web_framework)" title="Django (web framework)">Django</a> uses a <a href="Regular_expression" title="Regular expression">regular-expressions</a>-based system. This is not strictly URL rewriting since there is no script to 'rewrite' to, nor even a directory structure; but it provides the full flexibility of URL rewriting.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-5"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>5<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li><a href="Java_(programming_language)" title="Java (programming language)">Java</a> <a href="Stripes_(framework)" title="Stripes (framework)">Stripes Framework</a> has had integrated functionality since version 1.5.<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-6"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>6<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li>Many Perl frameworks, such as <a href="Mojolicious" title="Mojolicious">Mojolicious</a> and <a href="Catalyst_(software)" title="Catalyst (software)">Catalyst</a>, have this feature.<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-7"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>7<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li><a href="CodeIgniter" title="CodeIgniter">CodeIgniter</a> has URL rewriting provided.</li>

<li><a href="Lighttpd" title="Lighttpd">lighttpd</a> has a mod_rewrite module.<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-8"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>8<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li><a href="Nginx" title="Nginx">nginx</a> has a rewrite module.<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-9"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>9<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-10"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>10<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> For example, a multi-link multi-variable page generation from a <a href="URI" class="mw-redirect" title="URI">URI</a> like <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://mdoc.su/f101,n61,o56,d/ifconfig"><style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r886049734">

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</style><span class="monospaced">/f101,n61,o56,d/ifconfig</span></a> is possible, where multiple individual parts like <span class="monospaced">f101</span> get expanded with the help of <a href="Regular_expression" title="Regular expression">regular expressions</a> into variables to signify <span class="monospaced"><a href="FreeBSD" title="FreeBSD">FreeBSD</a> 10.1-RELEASE</span> and so forth.</li>

<li><a href="Hiawatha_(web_server)" title="Hiawatha (web server)">Hiawatha HTTP server</a> has a URL Toolkit which supports URL rewriting.<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-11"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>11<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></li>

<li><a href="Cherokee_(Webserver)" class="mw-redirect" title="Cherokee (Webserver)">Cherokee HTTP server</a> supports regular expressions of URL rewriting and redirections.</li></ul>

<p>From a <a href="Software_development" title="Software development">software development</a> perspective, URL rewriting can aid in code modularization and <a href="Control_flow" title="Control flow">control flow</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-12" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-12"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>12<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> making it a useful feature of modern web frameworks.

</p>

<ul><li><a href="Application_Delivery_Controller" class="mw-redirect" title="Application Delivery Controller">Application Delivery Controller</a></li>

<li><a href="AiScaler" title="AiScaler">aiScaler Traffic Manager</a></li>

<li><a href=".htaccess" title=".htaccess">.htaccess</a></li>

<li><a href="Apache_HTTP_Server" title="Apache HTTP Server">Apache HTTP Server</a></li>

<li><a href="Content_negotiation" title="Content negotiation">Content negotiation</a></li>

<li><a href="Internet_Information_Server" class="mw-redirect" title="Internet Information Server">Internet Information Server</a></li>

<li><a href="Permalink" title="Permalink">Permalink</a></li>

<li><a href="Zeus_Web_Server" title="Zeus Web Server">Zeus Web Server</a></li></ul>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Notes">Notes</h2></div>

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<li id="cite_note-sidenote-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-sidenote_1-0">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Many of these only apply to HTTP servers whose default behavior is to map URLs to <a href="Filesystem" class="mw-redirect" title="Filesystem">filesystem</a> entities (i.e. files and directories); certain environments, such as many HTTP <a href="Application_server" title="Application server">application server</a> platforms, make this irrelevant.</span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-2"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite documentation</a></span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-3"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-3">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.iis.net/download/URLRewrite">URL Rewrite extension for Microsoft IIS</a></span>

</li>

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</style><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html">"Rails Routing from the Outside In"</a>. "Ruby on Rails<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">25 April</span> 2014</span>.</cite></span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-5"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/#id1">Django URLconf</a></span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-6"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://greggbolinger.blogspot.com/2008/01/stripes-15-feature-clean-urls.html">clean urls in Stripes 1.5</a></span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-7"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-7">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://mojolicio.us/perldoc?Mojolicious/Guides/Routing">Guides - Mojolicious guide to the galaxy</a>. Mojolicious. Retrieved on 2013-09-08.</span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-8"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-8">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://redmine.lighttpd.net/wiki/1/Docs:ModRewrite">Docs ModRewrite - Lighttpd - lighty labs</a>. Redmine.lighttpd.net. Retrieved on 2013-09-08.</span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-9"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-9">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://nginx.org/r/rewrite">"ngx_http_rewrite_module - rewrite"</a>. nginx.org<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">25 December</span> 2014</span>.</cite></span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-10"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-10">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite id="CITEREFMurenin2013" class="citation mailinglist cs1">Murenin, Constantine A. (18 February 2013). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://mailman.nginx.org/pipermail/nginx/2013-February/037592.html">"A dynamic web-site written wholly in nginx.conf? Introducing mdoc.su!"</a>. <i>nginx@nginx.org</i> (Mailing list)<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">24 December</span> 2014</span>.</cite></span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-11"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-11">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/manpages">URL TOOLKIT part of Hiawatha webserver's manual</a></span>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-12"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-12">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://docforge.com/wiki/Clean_URL">"Clean URL"</a>. DocForge<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">25 April</span> 2014</span>.</cite></span>

</li>

</ol></div>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2></div>

<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/">Apache mod_rewrite</a></li></ul></div><div><div class="zim-footer">

This article is issued from <a class="external text" title="Last edited on 2025-06-27" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?title=Rewrite_engine&oldid=1297620380">Wikipedia</a>. The text is available under <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0</a> unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

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