The Bakery Everything CakePHP

Background

In general, you should never use .htaccess files unless you don't have access to the main server configuration file --apache.org
First off a little background. Htaccess files are resource hogs. If enabled, on every request your disk is hit multiple times as apache looks for these files in every directory from your document root all the way up to where the content that is being requested actually lives. In addition, directives in .htaccess files found in this search have to be merged with the apache config directives in memory that overlap in the same scope. Apache has some nice examples and further explanation here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html#when

Part 1: say bye to .htaccess

OK so now that you understand the problem, lets solve it. Most things that can be done in an .htaccess file can be done in a Directory container. Lets get right to the solution, then I will explain. your apache config file:
Download code <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName www.leaguelogix.com
        ServerAlias www.leaguelogix.com leaguelogix.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/leaguelogix/app/webroot

        Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks

    #disable htaccess starting at /
       <Directory />
                AllowOverride none
        </Directory>

       <Directory /var/www/leaguelogix/app/webroot/>
                RewriteEngine On
                RewriteBase /
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

                <Files sitemap.xml>
                        RewriteEngine Off
                </Files>
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
First disable searching and parsing of htaccess by doing
Download code <Directory />
    AllowOverride none
</Directory> This will prevent apache from looking for it anywhere throughout the request. You can delete .htaccess files from your cake project at this point - but you don't have to.

Setup your DocumentRoot to point to your cake app's webroot dir.

Then setup the rewrite rules.
Download code                 
                RewriteEngine On
                RewriteBase /
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L] I don't want to get into the power and complexity of mod_rewrite in this article, so I'll briefly summarize. These rules will take requests that are not for files or directores, and internally re-direct the request to the index.php file in the cake webroot directory. This facilitates the "magic" of mapping pretty URL's (named after your controller for example) into the cake framework.

Now restart apache (sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart) and you should be off and running.

Part 2: A real world example

So that was easy right? Now for a real life example where this gets more complex (but very helpful).

If you were curious, and went to leaguelogix.com, you'll notice its not a cake app at all. It's just a wp blog that I setup in ~ 30mins. My cake app (and my real product) is a web app platform that drives many sites. My startup provides tooling that allows one person to easily manage and run many sports leagues - and each customer gets their own website (and domain).

I wanted to have a way where potential customers could quickly create a site for free, to test out my product. So instead of having a website, they could just get a mysite.leaguelogix.com subdomain. I wanted to keep avoiding .htaccess, as well as not having to make a separate virtual host for each subdomain. The cakephp platform (my app) is common among all sites - there is just a bit of config and look and feel that is unique to a site.

Here is where Apache's VirtualDocumentRoot and the topic discussed in Part 1 pays off. Again, right to the code, then an explanation.
Download code <VirtualHost *:80>
    #this handles sitename.leaguelogix.com
    ServerName leaguelogix.com
    ServerAlias *.leaguelogix.com
             
        Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks

    UseCanonicalName Off
    VirtualDocumentRoot /opt/leagues/sites/%1/app/webroot

    <Directory />
            AllowOverride none
    </Directory>

    <Directory "/opt/leagues/sites/*/app/webroot/">
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteBase /
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        RewriteRule ^/opt/leagues/sites/(.*)/app/webroot/(.*)$ index.php?url=$2 [QSA,L]

        <Files sitemap.xml>
            RewriteEngine Off
        </Files>
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
So I'll discuss the delta's from Part 1.
Download code UseCanonicalName Off
VirtualDocumentRoot /opt/leagues/sites/%1/app/webroot This allows you to use one apache config to serve many document roots based on the domain that is entered. EX: a request for http://mysite.leaguelogix.com will set the document root to /opt/leagues/sites/mysite/app/webroot. Cool eh? So no need to make new apache vhost and reload the config every time i get a new "trial" customer.

Now the tricky part - loading mod_vhost_alias and using VirtualDocumentRoot throws a wrench into our simple mod_rewrite directives in Part 1. It now sends the entire fully qualified path to RewriteRule. Cakes index.php?url does not work with this. The following line takes care of that:
Download code RewriteRule ^/opt/leagues/sites/(.*)/app/webroot/(.*)$ index.php?url=$2 [QSA,L] This will "strip off" the webroot, and pass the url that cake needs ($2).

thats it - good luck and hope this helped.

NOTE: While I have done some testing on this - I should note that I have not put this into production yet. Please feel free to post comments on potential pitfalls this approach might have. I will try to respond to comments/questions the best I can...

Interested in squeezing more performance out of Cake? Check out a nice article from pseudocoder here: http://www.pseudocoder.com/archives/2009/03/17/8-ways-to-speed-up-cakephp-apps/