Add Security to your PHP projects using .htaccess file

In this article very small discussion about .htaccess file. After lots of requests I publish this article to add more security to your php application using .htaccess file. In this tutorial I want to explain about hiding .php extensions and URL rewriting. So improve your Web projects security and quality.

Making .htaccess file :

Very simple open any editor like notepad just file save as into .htaccess with in double quotations(“.htacess”). You have to upload this file in to hosting root folder, my experience .htaccess file supports only Unix based servers.

Hide .php extension with URL Rewriting

For example if we want to project like Twitter API URLs (http://twitter.com/home)

Add this following code in your .htaccess file

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\$ $1.php

We can Rewrite index.php into index.html,index.asp  also

Below code for index.php to index.html

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $1.php

If you want .asp extension just replace html to asp

Redirecting www URL to non www URL

If you type www.twitter.com in browser it will be redirected to twitter.com.

Add this Following Code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.srinivas.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://srinivas.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Rewriting ‘website.com/home.php?uid=myuser’ to ‘website.com/myuser’

If you want change like this see the below code

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ home.php?uid=$1
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/$ home.php?uid=$1