.htaccess: Serve static files, route everything else to index.php

Question

I want to use an .htaccess file to check if the requested path is a file in the public/ directory. If yes, serve it, else forward request to /index.php. I can't seem to get this to work.

Here's what I've got:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

Options -Indexes

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/public%{REQUEST_URI} -f
RewriteRule ^ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/public%{REQUEST_URI} [L]

RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]

e.g. http://example.com/css/style.css should have apache serve /public/css/style.css because it's a file that exists, but http://example.com/css/style.bad should be sent to /index.php.

Solution 1

Apparently [L] does not work as I expected. With that in mind, and a lot of trial and error, I managed to find something that works:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/public%{REQUEST_URI} -f
RewriteRule ^ public%{REQUEST_URI} [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/public/
RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]

Solution 2

This code should be working as expected on your side

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews -Indexes

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/public/$1 -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/public/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L,QSA]

Comments

[mpen]

That works! Thank you. I just noticed though that style.css is available at both /css/style.css and /public/css/style.css though. Technically the latter should route to index.php too since /public/public/css.style.css is not a file. This also means /public/xxx will throw an apache 404 instead of the custom one I've configured in my index.php file. No way to fix that, is there?