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We have this RedirectMatch rule to move clients on the SSL enabled site while maintaining the path they're trying to access:

Redirectmatch permanent (.*) https://www.foobar.com$1

and it is working perfectly. Now we would like to add an exception for /somepath that should not be redirected. How can I do that?

With mod_rewrite I would add a rewriterule saying "don't rewrite and stop matching", but there isn't such mechanism with redirect. Also, if I trivially reverse the regexp like !(/somepath|/someotherpath) it would no longer get the $1 parameter.

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3 Answers 3

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Any reason you don't want to use mod_rewrite?

You could mimic the functionality with this:

RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/(somepath|someotherpath)
RewriteRule  (.*)                       $1                        [R=permanent]
RewriteRule  http://%{SERVER_NAME}(.*)  https://www.foobar.com$1  [L]

I hadn't realized Apache uses PCRE. Since it does, you can do this bit of voodoo to do what you want with mod_alias:

RedirectMatch permanent ^/?((?!(thisisfoo|thisisbar)).*) https://www.foobar.com/$1

where /thisisfoo and /thisisbar are exceptions to the redirect.

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    mod_rewrite is never the answer to whole-site problems.
    – adaptr
    Oct 23, 2012 at 12:52
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    @adaptr: I agree 100%, eventually you get mounds of convoluted match rules, the whole thing becomes a mess. Plus mod_rewrite requires more resources, and executes before all mod_alias declarations. So mod_rewrite is extremely powerful, but flexibility always comes at a cost. Sometimes it's the best tool for the job, but it seems like everyone just copies/pastes mod_rewrite rules for everything.
    – J. M. Becker
    Feb 7, 2013 at 17:40
  • @adaptr, So are you indicating that this answer is awful/not recommended? Or am I misunderstanding your comment. That's fine, either way. If the former, then I would really like insight on what your recommended/proposed solution is. Without an alternative here, I'm about to do something very much like this. But if there is a better way, I'd really like to know! DevOps and Server stuff is hard to figure out. Way More so than front/back end, IMHO.
    – SherylHohman
    Feb 8, 2019 at 20:25
  • Also, @j-m-becker, maybe you could weigh in on this (my question above)? - Sounds like you're maybe ok, with the above solution, but maybe not? Really just trying to understand.
    – SherylHohman
    Feb 8, 2019 at 20:26
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According to the documentation (at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_alias.html#order), Redirects are proccessed in the order they are encountered. So you would want to put your more restrictive rule first, and then have your catch-all rule at the end.

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    Which works great, assuming your narrowly scoped declaration is a redirect. In this particular question, it's not a redirect, it's an exception to the site-wide redirect. Still a great tip, just not an answer related to the OP. On the other hand, this would make a great comment.
    – J. M. Becker
    Feb 7, 2013 at 17:37
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I landed here before I found correct answer for my situation, so I'm adding my solution for reference.

I needed to redirect everything except two folders, I'm calling them files1 and files2 in the example below:

RedirectMatch permanent "^(/(?!(files1/|files2/)).*)" https://www.example.com$1

Likewise word permanent can be replaced by 301 which is essentially the same ("permanent" in HTTP code), or with 302 (which means temporary redirect).

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