htaccess Redirect / RedirectMatch with URLs that contain Special / Encoded Characters

Posted by dSquared on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by dSquared
Published on 2012-11-05T01:10:15Z Indexed on 2012/11/05 5:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 424

Filed under:

.htaccess

|

mod-rewrite

|

redirect

I'm currently in the process of applying a variety of 301 redirects in an .htaccess file for a website that recently changed its structure. Everything is working as expected, except for URLs that contain special characters, for these I am getting 404 errors.

For example the following directives that have a registered trademark symbol (®) bring up 404 pages:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/directory/link-with®-special-character(/)?$ somelink.com
RedirectMatch 301 ^/directory/link-with%c2%ae-special-character(/)?$ somelink.com

I've also tried using Redirect, RewriteRule and surrounding the urls with double quotes and nothing seems to work.

Does anyone know what might be happening or the proper way to handle these types of directives?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about .htaccess

Seeking htaccess help: Converting multiple subdomains (both http and https) to www.domain.com using .htaccess

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
I've been trying to get an answer to this question on other forums (the folks at SuperUser thought this was the place I needed to post) and via my connections, but I haven't gotten very far. Hopefully you guys can help me find an answer: I've got a dozen old subdomains that have been indexed by Google… >>> More
Disable .htaccess or disable some rules from .htaccess on specific URL

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have Kerberos-based authentication and I want to disable it on only root url: mysite.com/. And I want it to works fine on any other page like mysite.com/page1. I have such things in my .htaccess: AuthType Kerberos AuthName "Domain login" KrbAuthRealms DOMAIN.COM KrbMethodK5Passwd on Krb5KeyTab… >>> More
.htaccess Permission denied. Unable to check htaccess file

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, I have a strange problem when adding a sub-domain to our virtual server. I have done similar sub-domains before and they have worked fine. When I try to access the sub-domain I get an 403 Forbidden error. I checked the error logs and have the following error: pcfg_openfile: unable to check… >>> More
.htaccess Permission denied. Unable to check htaccess file

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a strange problem when adding a sub-domain to our virtual server. I have done similar sub-domains before and they have worked fine. When I try to access the sub-domain I get an 403 Forbidden error. I checked the error logs and have the following error: pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess… >>> More
Permission denied: /home/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
This domain was working this morning, now I get a 403 error and the message above in my error log. I'm not using .htaccess files but I have been doing some copy on the server so may have messed things up but no changes to this domain (unless by accident!). What is this pcfg_openfile thing anyway? Done… >>> More

Related posts about mod-rewrite

Why won't this Apache modrewrite RewriteRule work?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to get Apache mod rewrite to work on my local machine. I'm running OSX with PHP 5 and the Apache mod rewrite module is enabled. I have a directory called localhost/~Jason/hfh/admin with various PHP includes called based on a $_GET variable. I want to let users type (in theory) localhost/~Jason/hfh/admin/pages and… >>> More
Mod Rewrite Help - Pseudo-Subdirectories

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am dealing with a frustrating problem with Joomla that is going to require some url trickery. The idea is straight-forward but after reading a bunch of guides for mod-rewrite, I still can't seem to get it work. Let's say my site is www.mysite.com. Joomla is already performing some rewriting for… >>> More
mod-rewrite: Replacing some characters in a url

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Is it possible to replace some forward slashes (/) of a URL to dots (.) in a RewriteRule? It doesn't have to be done exclusively with a RewriteRule, but definitely not with a script. Example 1: INPUT: /document/my/document.html OUTPUT: /document-my.document.html Example 2: INPUT: /document/depth/of/path/can/vary… >>> More
Mod rewrite for fake subdomains?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, I really tried tons of methods but i'm not successful. I want a .Htaccess code to do the following : I want to rename this : http://www.mydomain.com/media -- http://media.mydomain.com So, By example instead of calling this : http://www.mydomain.com/media/XXX/picture.jpg i will call : http://media… >>> More
Using ModRewrite to get rid of extentions

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I would like to get rid of all the file extensions on my site. Except when they are on the index i would like it to say nothing... change this foo.com/index.html to this foo.com/ and when the user goes to another page like foo.com/contact-us.html it will be foo.com/contact-us RewriteEngine On RewriteRule… >>> More