How to enable Multiviews

MultiViews is an Apache per-directory option, which is not natively supported by LiteSpeed web server at the time of this writing. However, it can be achieved through the rewrite rules.

The effect of MultiViews is as follows: if the server receives a request for /some/dir/foo, if /some/dir has MultiViews enabled, and /some/dir/foo does not exist, then the server reads the directory looking for files named foo.*, and effectively fakes up a type map which names all those files, assigning them the same media types and content-encodings it would have if the client had asked for one of them by name. It then chooses the best match to the client's requirements.

MultiViews may sometimes cause very strange rewrite problem. When you turn on rewrite log, you might see something like the following. It indicates “MultiViews” is enabled.

[perdir /var/www/] add path info postfix: /var/www/product.php -> /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] strip per-dir prefix: /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php -> product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] applying pattern '^([0-9]+)/([^/]+)\.php$' to uri 'product.php/Test__Test.php'
[perdir /var/www/] add path info postfix: /var/www/product.php -> /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] strip per-dir prefix: /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php -> product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] applying pattern '^prodotto/([^/]+)\.php$' to uri 'product.php/Test__Test.php'
[perdir /var/www/] add path info postfix: /var/www/product.php -> /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] strip per-dir prefix: /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php -> product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] applying pattern '^prodotto/([^/]+)\.php?id=([0-9]+)$' to uri 'product.php/Test__Test.php'
[perdir /var/www/] add path info postfix: /var/www/product.php -> /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] strip per-dir prefix: /var/www/product.php/Test__Test.php -> product.php/Test__Test.php
[perdir /var/www/] applying pattern '^c/([^/]+)/([^/]+)\.php$' to uri 'product.php/Test__Test.php'
[perdir /var/www/] pass through /var/www/product.php 

The problem was that the request was being modified by MultiViews, substituting /product/ with /product.php and never triggering the mod_rewrite rule.

Generally we don't recommend to use MultiViews function to avoid such confistion.

Our customer is using an old jshop which works on Apache. After switch to LSWS, it always redirect to the homepage. It has a very very long rewrite in .htaccess hence it is not easy to identify where is wrong.

Enable rewrite log for Apache and LSWS, but it still not easy to identify the problem.

The following is from Apache rewrite log:

[Wed Sep 12 05:46:58.807252 2018] [rewrite:trace3] [pid 679517:tid 140344885401344] mod_rewrite.c(483): [client 175.156.215.157:58596] 175.156.215.157 - - [www.example.com/sid#7fa4b3f8b5d8][rid#7fa460006a60/initial] [perdir /home/user1/public_html/] add path info postfix: /home/user1/public_html/s.php -> /home/user1/public_html/s.php/2/menus-reading-michelin-star-restaurant-berkshire, referer: https://www.example.com/
[Wed Sep 12 05:46:58.807300 2018] [rewrite:trace3] [pid 679517:tid 140344885401344] mod_rewrite.c(483): [client 175.156.215.157:58596] 175.156.215.157 - - [www.lortolan.com/sid#7fa4b3f8b5d8][rid#7fa460006a60/initial] [perdir /home/user1/public_html/] strip per-dir prefix: /home/user1/public_html/s.php/2/menus-reading-michelin-star-restaurant-berkshire -> s.php/2/menus-reading-michelin-star-restaurant-berkshire, referer: https://www.example.com/

As far as the following MultiViews option disabled in .htaccess, Apache won't work anymore.

Options +MultiViews

It can be determined that MultiViews is the root cause for the rewrite problem.

Why Apache works but LSWS doesn't? Apache supports the above MultiViews while LSWS does not. How to make MultiViews work on LSWS?

If a site has a URI that uses PATHINFO, here's how the redirection should work:

/topic/Office/Work ==> /topic.php/Office/Work
/update/Office/Work ==> /update.php/Office/Work/topic-> /topic.php

The following is a code example to implement Multiviews that uses PATHINFO through rewrite rules for LSWS:

# Multiviews example code...use this in a .htaccess file
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.+php*
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1\.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?(.*)$ $1.php/$2 [L]

As far as the above code added, LSWS works fine now for this particular site.

For example:

Options +MultiViews
AddLanguage de .de
AddLanguage en .en

can be done through the following rewrite rule:

AddType text/html .en
AddType text/html .de

SetEnvIf Accept-Language ^de LANG=.de
SetEnvIf Accept-Language ^en LANG=.en
SetEnvIf LANG ^$ LANG=.de

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !%{ENV:LANG}$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1%{ENV:LANG} [L,QSA]