Apache Installation Notes

Apache is a popular and well known web server available on many platforms.

Configuring Apache for Phalcon

The following are potential configurations you can use to setup Apache with Phalcon. These notes are primarily focused on the configuration of the mod_rewrite module allowing to use friendly URLs and the router component. Commonly an application has the following structure:

test/
  app/
    controllers/
    models/
    views/
  public/
    css/
    img/
    js/
    index.php

Directory under the main Document Root

This being the most common case, the application is installed in any directory under the document root. In this case, we use two .htaccess files, the first one to hide the application code forwarding all requests to the application’s document root (public/).

# test/.htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule  ^$ public/    [L]
    RewriteRule  ((?s).*) public/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Now a second .htaccess file is located in the public/ directory, this re-writes all the URIs to the public/index.php file:

# test/public/.htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^((?s).*)$ index.php?_url=/$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

If you do not want to use .htaccess files you can move these configurations to the apache’s main configuration file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

    <Directory "/var/www/test">
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteRule  ^$ public/    [L]
        RewriteRule  ((?s).*) public/$1 [L]
    </Directory>

    <Directory "/var/www/test/public">
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        RewriteRule ^((?s).*)$ index.php?_url=/$1 [QSA,L]
    </Directory>

</IfModule>

Virtual Hosts

And this second configuration allows you to install a Phalcon application in a virtual host:

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot "/var/vhosts/test/public"
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    ServerName example.host
    ServerAlias www.example.host

    <Directory "/var/vhosts/test/public">
        Options All
        AllowOverride All
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Or if you are using Apache 2.4 or above:

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot "/var/vhosts/test/public"
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    ServerName example.host
    ServerAlias www.example.host

    <Directory "/var/vhosts/test/public">
        Options All
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>