What is L in [QSA, L] in htaccess

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16468098/what-is-l-in-qsa-l-in-htaccess

What is L in [QSA, L] in htaccess

Asked 9 years, 11 months agoModified 1 year, 2 months agoViewed 107k times85

QSA means that if there's a query string passed with the original URL, it will be appended to the rewrite (olle?p=1 will be rewritten as index.php?url=olle&p=1.

L means if the rule matches, don't process any more RewriteRules below this one.

Hi, what are some easy examples to explain the use of L? I can't seem to grasp this explanation above. Any help will be highly appreciated. Thanks.

ShareImprove this questionFollowasked May 9, 2013 at 18:00stackoverflower's user avatarstackoverflower88911 gold badge77 silver badges55 bronze badges

Add a comment

3 Answers

Sorted by: Highest score (default) Trending (recent votes count more) Date modified (newest first) Date created (oldest first) 124

.htaccess flag list

  • C (chained with next rule)

  • CO=cookie (set specified cookie)

  • E=var:value (set environment variable var to value)

  • F (forbidden - sends a 403 header to the user)

  • G (gone - no longer exists)

  • H=handler (set handler)

  • L (last - stop processing rules)

Last rule: instructs the server to stop rewriting after the preceding directive is processed.

  • N (next - continue processing rules)

  • NC (case insensitive)

  • NE (do not escape special URL characters in output)

  • NS (ignore this rule if the request is a subrequest)

  • P (proxy - i.e., apache should grab the remote content specified in the substitution section and return it)

  • PT (pass through - use when processing URLs with additional handlers, e.g., mod_alias)

  • R (temporary redirect to new URL)

  • R=301 (permanent redirect to new URL)

  • QSA (append query string from request to substituted URL)

  • S=x (skip next x rules)

  • T=mime-type (force specified mime type)

Flags are added to the end of a rewrite rule to tell Apache how to interpret and handle the rule. They can be used to tell apache to treat the rule as case-insensitive, to stop processing rules if the current one matches, or a variety of other options. They are comma-separated, and contained in square brackets.

ShareImprove this answerFollowedited Aug 30, 2016 at 10:54answered Aug 30, 2016 at 10:39Smit Patadiya's user avatarSmit Patadiya1,38811 gold badge88 silver badges66 bronze badges

Add a comment102

The QSA flag means to append an existing query string after the URI has been rewritten. Example:

URL=http://example.com/foo/bar?q=blah

Rule:

RewriteRule ^foo/(.*)$ /index.php?b=$1

Result=/index.php?b=bar

Notice how the q=blah is gone. Because the existing query string is dropped in favor of the one in the rule's target, (b=$1). Now if you include a QSA flag:

RewriteRule ^foo/(.*)$ /index.php?b=$1 [QSA]

The result becomes=/index.php?b=bar&q=blah

The L flag simply means to stop applying any rules that follow. Given the same URL, http://example.com/foo/bar?q=blah, and given the rules:

RewriteRule ^foo - 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/bar.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /bar.php?z=$1

The first rule gets applied and the URI gets passed through unchanged (via the - target). The rewrite engine then processes the next rule, and the URI gets rewritten to /bar.php?z=foo/bar. What happens when you add an L to the end:

RewriteRule ^foo - [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/bar.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /bar.php?z=$1

The URL http://example.com/foo/bar gets passed through untouched from the first rule, then stops because of the L flag. If the URL is http://example.com/something/else then the first rule doesn't match and the second rule gets applied, rewriting the URI to: /bar.php?z=something/else

Note that since the rewrite engine loops through all the rules until the URI stops changing, the L flag will not prevent the looping, only any further rules from getting applied in the current iteration.

ShareImprove this answerFollowanswered May 9, 2013 at 18:32Jon Lin's user avatarJon Lin141k2929 gold badges216216 silver badges218218 bronze badges

  • QSA replaces ? to &, making it impossible to distinguish between /page&foobar vs /page?foobar. How can I stop QSA from replacing ? to &? – Pacerier Sep 27, 2017 at 6:06

  • @Pacerier if you need to encode the query string in the new query string, then you may want to look into using the %{QUERY_STRING} variable instead of using QSA – Jon Lin Sep 27, 2017 at 14:32

Add a comment-1

Example of [L,QSA]

Before: https://example.com/index.php?user=robert

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^user/([^/]+)?$ index.php?user=$1 [L,QSA]

After: https://example.com/user/robert?query=value

You can also use other query too.

Like: robert?query=value&query2=value2&query3=value3

ShareImprove this answerFollow

PreviousFile .htaccess là gì, Hướng dẫn cách dùng file .htaccess toàn tập

Last updated

Was this helpful?