Redirect www to non www and redirect to index.php

Question

my www folder has the following .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

my api folder (within the www folder) has the following .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /api/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /api/index.php [L]

I would like to redirect www to non www urls while keeping the rules for index.php. I tried many things without success ...

What I tried :

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/234723/generic-htaccess-redirect-www-to-non-www

Update :

I think I might just need a succession of rules

That is :

1/ redirect www to non www url and go to 2

2/ If file does not exist -> redirect to index.php

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase 
%% Here redirect www to non www url %%
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Answer 1

From what you've stated in comments, there doesn't seem to be a requirement to maintain two separate .htaccess files. In this case it would be simpler to maintain just one .htaccess file in the document root (assuming they are related).

I am also making the following assumptions about your "api", which also simplifies the directives:

• All requests of the form /api/<anything> should be routed to /api/index.php
• There are no physical files (or directories) that need to be accessed via /api/<file>. (It is an "API" after all.)

You can then do something like the following in the root .htaccess file (and removing the /api/.htaccess file entirely).

RewriteEngine On

# Canonical redirect www to non-www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

# Prevent further processing if the front-controller(s) has already been requested
RewriteRule ^(api/)?index\.php$ - [L]

# Rewrite requests for the API
RewriteRule ^api/. api/index.php [L]

# Rewrite requests for the root application
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php [L]   

The RewriteBase directive is not required here.

Note that you should first test with a 302 (temporary) redirect to avoid potential caching issues. And you will likely need to clear your browser (and any intermediary) caches before testing.

However, a slight concern with this (as I mentioned in comments) is with implementing a canonical redirect for requests to your /api/. Scripts that are making requests to an API won't generally follow redirects - it is expected that these requests are already being made to the canonical URL. So, implementing a redirect for these requests could potentially break these "incorrect" API calls to the non-canonical hostname. Does it matter if the API calls are made to the non-canonical hostname? The www to non-www redirect is generally only for SEO, which does not apply to an API.

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Maintaining two .htaccess files (alternative)

Alternatively, if you are maintaining two separate .htaccess files (maybe they are two unrelated projects). One in the root and the other in the /api subdirectory then you would need to repeat the www to non-www (canonical) redirect in both .htaccess files since mod_rewrite directives are not inherited by default.

For example:

# /.htaccess (root) file

RewriteEngine On

# Canonical redirect www to non-www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

# Prevent further processing if the front-controller has already been requested
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

# Rewrite requests for the root application
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

and

# /api/.htaccess file

RewriteEngine On

# Canonical redirect www to non-www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

# Prevent further processing if the front-controller has already been requested
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

# Rewrite everything to the API
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

Unlike your original /api/.htaccess the api subdirectory does not need to be explicitly stated since we are using relative URL-paths (and no need for the RewriteBase directive). A relative URL-path is relative to the directory that contains the .htaccess file - so it's relative to the /api directive in this case.