After extension is removed, if file doesn't exist, send to a particular page-CodePudding

My question is somewhat similar to this one but not exactly and I can't understand it enough to adapt it to my needs.

I have this htaccess rule to remove file extensions which works well

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

So /somepage refers to /somepage.php. I now need a sort of fallback to it incase somepage.php doesn't exist.

In which case /somepage would rewrite to /catchall.php?link=somepage which can handle the requests. How can I do this?

CodePudding user response：

Your current rule is adding .php extension blindly without checking existence of matching .php file. You can tweak your rule to check for presence of .php file and then only add .php. When a matching .php file doesn't exist then we can rewrite to /catchall.php.

RewriteEngine On

# add .php extension only if a matching .php file exists
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(. ?)/?$ $1.php [L]

# If URI is still not pointing to a valid file/directory
# then rewrite to /catchall.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .  catchall.php?link=$0 [L,QSA]