Hide PHP Extension In URL Using HTACCESS (Simple Examples)

Welcome to a quick tutorial on how to hide the PHP file extension in the URL. Don’t want to show an ugly PHP file extension or want to hide it away for security purposes?

An easy way to hide the PHP extension while using the Apache web server is to create a .htaccess file with the following lines:

  • RewriteEngine on
  • RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  • RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
  • RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]

This will now “map” http://site.com/PAGE to http://site.com/PAGE.php.

This covers the quick basics, but let us walk through a couple of examples to play with the URL rewrite – Read on!

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

DOWNLOAD & NOTES

Here is the download link to the example code, so you don’t have to copy-paste everything.

 

EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Source code on GitHub Gist

Just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

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EXTENSION HIDING

All right, let us now get into the various examples of hiding the PHP file extension.

 

METHOD 1) OFFICIAL SOLUTION – OBFUSCATED FILE TYPE

1-htaccess.txt
# (A) CONFUSE PEOPLE - PY OR ASP FILES ACTUALLY CONTAIN PHP CODE
AddType application/x-httpd-php .py .asp
 
# (B) OR USE AN UNKNOWN FILE TYPE
AddType application/x-httpd-php .foo .bar

Believe it or not, this is the actual official solution from the PHP website. What we do is rename .php into another extension such as .py, .asp, or .foo, but process them as PHP scripts in the .htaccess file. While I personally don’t agree with it, it does somewhat serve to confuse people.

P.S. This is a bad solution, what if the server has to support more than one language? This will definitely clash with Python, ASP, and cause serious confusion among developers.

 

 

METHOD 2) SIMPLE URL REWRITE

2-htaccess.txt
# (A) REWRITE ON
RewriteEngine on
 
# (B) DO NOT OVERRIDE EXISTING FOLDERS
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
 
# (C) REWRITE PHP FILES ONLY
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]

As in the introduction above, what this means in English:

  • RewriteEngine on Turn the URL rewrite engine on.
  • RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d Do not override existing folders.
  • RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f Rewrite only if it is a .php file.
  • RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L] Attempt to “map” http://SITE.com/PAGE to http://SITE.com/PAGE.php.

Yep, as simple as that. Four lines, problem solved.

 

METHOD 3) SIMPLE PRETTY URL WITH PHP

3A) HTACCESS – POINT EVERYTHING TO INDEX

3a-htaccess.txt
# (A) REWRITE ON
RewriteEngine On
 
# (B) DO NOT OVERRIDE HTTP AUTH
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

# (C) MAKE SURE THE REWRITEBASE IS CORRECT
# I.E. IF HTTP://SITE.COM/FOLDER/, BASE SHOULD BE /FOLDER/
RewriteBase /
 
# (D) DO NOT OVERRIDE EXISTING FILES FOLDERS
RewriteRule ^3b-index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 

# (E) MAKE SURE PATH IS CORRECT
# IF HTTP://SITE.COM/FOLDER/, SHOULD BE /FOLDER/3B-INDEX.PHP
RewriteRule . /3b-index.php [L]

Combining .htaccess with PHP, we can create a good page template system – Here is the .htaccess file “borrowed” from WordPress. Not going to explain line by line. But in plain English, this means “point everything to 3b-index.php but leave the existing files and folders alone”.

 

 

3B) INDEX – PAGE LOADER & HANDLER

3b-index.php
<?php
// (A) SETTINGS
define("URL_PATH", "/"); // CHANGE THIS IF NOT ROOT!
define("PATH_PAGES", __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . "pages" . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);

// (B) STRIP PATH DOWN TO AN ARRAY 
// HTTP://SITE.COM/HELLO/WORLD/ > $_PATH = ["HELLO", "WORLD"]
$_PATH = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_PATH); 
$_PATH = substr($_PATH, strlen(URL_PATH)); 
$_PATH = rtrim($_PATH, '/');
$_PATH = explode("/", $_PATH);

// (C) FILE NAME YOGA
// $_PATH = ["HELLO", "WORLD"] > $_FILE = "HELLO-WORLD.PHP";
// $_PATH = [] > $_FILE = "HOME.PHP";
if (count($_PATH) > 1) { $_FILE = implode("-", $_PATH) . ".php"; }
else { $_FILE = ($_PATH[0]=="" ? "home" : $_PATH[0]) . ".php"; }

// (D) LOAD PAGE - CREATE YOUR OWN HTML TEMPLATE IF YOU WANT
if (file_exists(PATH_PAGES . $_FILE)) {
  // require "TOP-HALF.PHP";
  require PATH_PAGES . $_FILE;
  // require "BOTTOM-HALF.PHP";
}
 
// (E) NOT FOUND - SERVE YOUR OWN CUSTOM 404 PAGE IF YOU WANT
else {
  http_response_code(404);
  echo "OOPS. FILE NOT FOUND";
}

In the “index page handler”, we simply break the path portion of the URL down and load the respective page. For example, http://site.com/test/ will load pages/test.php. Yep, feel free to create your own HTML template system here, or even load contents from the database.

 

3C) DUMMY PAGE

pages/test.php
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>TEST!</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>This is a test page!</p>
  </body>
</html>

 

 

EXTRAS

That’s all for this tutorial, and here is a small section on some extras and links that may be useful to you.

 

HOW ABOUT IIS & NGINX?

If you using IIS or NGNIX – Don’t worry. Both of them also offer URL rewrite, and the idea behind this guide will still kind of work. But the syntax for both web servers is different, and you will need to do some homework.

 

LINKS & REFERENCES

 

THE END

Thank you for reading, and we have come to the end of this guide. I hope that it has helped you with your project, and if you want to share anything with this guide, please feel free to comment below. Good luck and happy coding!

6 thoughts on “Hide PHP Extension In URL Using HTACCESS (Simple Examples)”

  1. Thanks! However, if you do not want .htaccess files, you can do this in httpd.conf directly for a specific directory.

    <Directory /FOLDER>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
    RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
    </Directory>

  2. Hi there,
    I have followed your instructions and the template worked for the most part but I ran into this one issue. After I log the users in, I redirect them to the home page using header(‘Location: https//www.mysite.com/member/home’). It works if the trailing slash after home isn’t there; however, if I redirect using header(‘Location: https//www.mysite.com/member/home/’) (with trailing slash) and then try to call another page say stock from my home page, the stock is appended to the url and it obviously does not work i.e. https://www. mysite.com/member/home/stock/
    Is there any way that I can make it work for both with trailing slash and without trailing slash. Clicking on other menu options would simply keep appending i.e. https://www. mysite.com/member/home/stock/logout/home/ and it’s no going anywhere.

    I did have an issue with my css and then I used absolute path based on your answer to another use and it had it fixed.

    I thank you in advance.

    1. Force append trailing slash to the url automatically.

      RewriteEngine on
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(/$|\.) 
      RewriteRule (.*) %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L] 
      RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)/$ $1.php [NC,L]
  3. Hi there,

    I implemented your pretty URL option and it worked; however, I ran into an issue. I am calling .css files in my top.php or header.php file and if I call the php files ending with a trailing /, the PATH adds the name of the file to the path. For example, if I call www.mysite/contact/, the .css file in my header (which I call “css/screen.css”) is prepended with www. mysite .com/contact/css/screen.css as opposed to www.mysite.com/css/screen.css and therefore doesn’t render the css because it can’t find it.

    if I call the without a trailing slash i.e. www.mysite/contact then it works fine because with trailing / absent, it prepends the css file with www.mysite.com/css/screen.css

    any idea what needs to be done.

    thanks
    Sam

    1. Use absolute URL, not relative. In PHP – define("URL_CSS", "https://site.com/css/"), then in HTML <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?=URL_CSS?>STYLES.css">

  4. In order to redirect everything to index.php, you could use simply (.htaccess):
    FallbackResource /index.php

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