Change default index.php when using admin route

I'm currently on a project which gave me a small headache after trying to find a solution for a tiny problem I've bumped onto.

At the moment, my application loads my index.php file on every single page request it gets. Inside my index, the application fires-up some basic stuff, sets some variables etc. Well, the thing I'm currently looking for is that I would like to let my server load a different file (for example admin.php) as default. But, this only needs to happen when the url sub-directory is set as

So the server needs to handle every little thing exactly the same, but when the route is set as /admin/, its needs to autoload the admin.php instead of the default index.php.

Currently my .htaccess file looks like this

# mod-rewrite engine RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L] RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L] 

EDIT: To clear things up and visualize it a bit more:

• -> index.php

• -> admin.php

• -> admin.php - -> index.php

Inside these two file I load a new Zend_Application (ZF1)

3 Answers

Have you tried with the following RewriteRule:

RewriteRule ^admin/?$ admin.php [L] 

Your .htaccess would look likes:

# mod-rewrite engine RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^admin/?$ admin.php [L] RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L] RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L] 

Update 1

and if you try the RewriteRules in the following order:

RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L] RewriteRule ^.*(admin).*$ admin.php [NC,L] RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L] 

This should do the trick:

RewriteEngine On # handle requests to /admin/ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/admin/$ RewriteRule ^.*$ admin.php [NC,L] # handle all other requests RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L] RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L] 

To un-complicate things, you could have used a common boostrap script which would conditionally include the files. For example:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L] RewriteRule ^.*$ bootstrap.php [NC,L] 

Then, in bootstrap.php

<?php if(USER_IS_ADMIN){ require('admin.php'); }else{ require('index.php'); } 

If you really need to check via htaccess, you might like to see this SOF thread