Remove 'index.php' from URL with .htaccess - regex

Question

I've been trying all sorts of solutions from this site and none seem to work. I'm currently hosting with hostgator. This is my current .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
suPHP_ConfigPath /home/user/php.ini
<Files php.ini>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>
</IfModule>
This is in the root folder of my site. I have also tried adding a ? after index.php and no luck. Does anyone know why this isn't working?

Answer 1

This is the code you can use in your .htaccess (under DOCUMENT_ROOT) to remove index.php from URI:
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s(.*)/index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]

Answer 2

Symfony 2 has an excellent solution:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}::$1 ^(/.+)/(.*)::\2$
RewriteRule ^(.*) - [E=BASE:%1]
# Sets the HTTP_AUTHORIZATION header removed by apache
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} .
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteRule ^index\.php(/(.*)|$) %{ENV:BASE}/$2 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule .? - [L]
RewriteRule .? %{ENV:BASE}/index.php [L]
This accomplishes the following:
RewriteBase is not necessary (useful when the site is in a subdirectory beneath the web root)
index.php is removed if present
The request is routed to the correct index.php with the full query string from the original request
Note that the line:
RewriteRule ^(.*) - [E=BASE:%1]
is responsible for setting the %{ENV:BASE} variable for later on. Refer to Apache documentation on E|env flag.

Answer 3

I tried this and works fine:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
# Directs all EE web requests through the site index file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
Exceptions
If your site’s system directory (/system/) has been renamed and is still accessible by URL, modify the RewriteCond line above:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/newdirectoryname/.* [NC]
If you are running EE from a sub-directory rather from the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/myeesite/ instead of http://example.com/), just remove the slash preceding index.php in the RewriteRule line above, like so:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]
If you are running EE from a sub-directory and it still doesn’t work after removing the slash, you may need to specify the sub-directory in your rewrite rule. For example, if your sub-folder is named testing, change:
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
To:
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) testing/$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
And change:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
To:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ testing/index.php/$1 [L]
If your host requires forcing query strings, try adding a question mark following index.php in the RewriteRule line above, like so:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

Answer 4

To remove index.php from urls on apache2.4 you can use the following rule :
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^index\.php/(.+)$ /$1 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule !index\.php /index.php%{REQUEST_URI} [L,END]
This will change the uri
/index.php/foobar
to
/foobar
This rule will return an internal server error for lower versions of apache as they don't support the END flag. Please see the anubhava's answer above that works almost on all versions.

Answer 5

I've been compelled to join stack overflow.com today to comment here as the answer has solved a long term problem I've had with a Zend Framework website. I've worked on the website around 3 1/2 years and during that time I discovered that it didn't handle index.php correctly and this causes webmaster tools to see duplicate titles etc.
I decided to search again today for a solution, one of many times attempted.
This is the one (the last answer shown above) that solves my problem.
# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
As an example. this is what it achieves for me.
http://www.domainname.co.uk/index.php/categories/url-name.html
becomes
http://www.domainname.co.uk/categories/url-name.html
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the original question as it lead to the answer and solution above.
Extra Note: I have other rewrite commands that handles the other aspects but those on their own didn't fix the index.php and the only time this has been fixed is by using.
# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
I only hope it helps others whether its ExpressionEngine or Zend Framework, in the future.