URL Rewrites

Once you start using the embedded server for your development projects, you may wish to enable URL rewriting. Rewrites are used by most popular frameworks to do things like add the index.cfm back into SES URLs.
You may be used to configuring URL rewrites in Apache or IIS, but rewrites are also possible in CommandBox's embedded server via a Tuckey servlet filter which uses an xml configuration.
Commandbox also exposes a way to do url rewrites with the Undertow predicate language. If you missed the Server Rules section, go there to learn how to do url rewrites, security, and http header modification in a nice text based language (non-xml).
Default Rules
We've already added the required jars and created a default rewrite XML file that will work out-of-the-box with the ColdBox MVC Platform. To enable rewrites, start your server with the --rewritesEnable flag.
​http://tuckey.org/urlrewrite/manual/4.0/index.html​
start --rewritesEnable
Now URLs like
http://localhost/index.cfm/main
can now simply be
http://localhost/main
In server.json
server set web.rewrites.enable=true
server show web.rewrites.enable
info The default rewrite file can be found in ~\.CommandBox\cfml\system\config\urlrewrite.xml
Custom Rules
If you want to customize your rewrite rules, just create your own XML file and specify it when starting the server with the rewritesConfig parameter. Here we have a simple rewrite rule that redirects /foo to /index.cfm
customRewrites.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE urlrewrite PUBLIC "-//tuckey.org//DTD UrlRewrite 4.0//EN" "http://tuckey.org/res/dtds/urlrewrite4.0.dtd">
<urlrewrite>
    <!-- this will redirect the user from /foo to /index.cfm -->
    <rule>
        <from>^/foo$</from>
        <to type="redirect">/index.cfm</to>
    </rule>
    <!-- internally redirect the requested URL from /gallery to /index.cfm?page=gallery with query string appended -->
    <rule>
        <from>^/gallery</from>
        <to type="passthrough" qsappend="true">/index.cfm?page=gallery</to>
    </rule>
​
</urlrewrite>
Then, fire up your server with its custom rewrite rules:
start --rewritesEnable rewritesConfig=customRewrites.xml
In server.json
server set web.rewrites.enable=true
server set web.rewrites.config=customRewrites.xml
​
​
server show web.rewrites.enable
server show web.rewrites.config
You can place your custom rewrite rule wherever you like, and refer to it by using either a relative path or an absolute path. CommandBox will start looking relative to where the server.json file resides.
server set web.rewrites.enable=true
server set web.rewrites.config=/my/custom/path/customRewrites.xml
or
server set web.rewrites.enable=true
server set web.rewrites.config=~\.CommandBox\cfml\system\config\customRewrites.xml
Apache mod_rewrite-style rules
If you're coming from Apache, Tuckey supports a large subset of the mod_rewrite style rules like what you would put in .htaccess. You can simply put your rules in a file named .htaccess and point the web.rewrites.config property to that file.
Note: The name of the file matters with mod_rewrite-style rules. It must be called .htaccess. With xml rewrites, the filename is not important, only the content.
Here are some simple rewrite rules:
RewriteEngine on
​
#The ColdBox index.cfm/{path_info} rules.
RewriteRule ^$ index.cfm [QSA,NS]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.cfm/%{REQUEST_URI} [QSA,L,NS]
​
RewriteRule ^/foo/                         /
​
# Defend your computer from some worm attacks
RewriteRule .*(?:global.asa|default\.ida|root\.exe|\.\.).* . [F,I,O]
​
# Redirect Robots to a cfm version of your robots.txt
RewriteRule ^/robots\.txt                   /robots.cfm
​
# Change your default cfm file to index.cfm
RewriteRule ^/default.cfm                   /index.cfm [I,RP,L]
RewriteRule ^/default.cfm((\?.+)|())$       /index.cfm$1  [I,RP,L]
​
RewriteRule ^/News.html((\?.+)|())$         /News/index.cfm$1 [I,RP,L]
​
# redirect mozilla to another area
RewriteCond  %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^Mozilla.*
RewriteRule  ^/no-moz-here$                 /homepage.max.html  [L]
Please see the docs here on what's supported:
​http://cdn.rawgit.com/paultuckey/urlrewritefilter/master/src/doc/manual/4.0/index.html#mod_rewrite_conf​
info For more information on custom rewrite rules, consult the Tuckey docs.
SES URLs
Your servers come ready to accept SES-style URLs where any text after the file name will show up in the cgi.path_info. If rewrites are enabled, the index.cfm can be omitted.
site.com/index.cfm/home/login
SES URLs will also work in a sub directory, which used to only work on a "standard" Adobe CF Tomcat install. Please note, in order to hide the index.cfm in a subfolder, you'll need a custom rewrite rule.
site.com/myFolder/index.cfm/home/login
Logging
The Tuckey Rewrite engine has debug and trace level logging that can help you troubleshoot why your rewrite rules aren't (or are) firing. To view these logs, simply start your server with the --debug or --trace flags. Trace shows more details than debug. These options work best when starting in --console mode so you can watch the server logs as you hit the site. Alternatively, you can follow the server's logs with the server log --follow command.
start --debug
server log --follow
Additional Tuckey Settings
The Tuckey Rewrite library that CommandBox uses under the hood. It has some extra settings that CommandBox allows you to use.
Watch rewrite file for changes
To monitor your custom rewrite file for changes without needing to restart the server, use this setting.
server set web.rewrites.configReloadSeconds=30
Internal Tuckey status page
To enable the inbuilt Tuckey status page, use the following setting. Note, debug mode needs to be turned on for the Tuckey status page to work. Also, you'll need to customize your rewrite file if you use a path other than /tuckey-status.
server set web.rewrites.statusPath=/tuckey-status
HTTPS Redirect/HSTS
Aliases
Last modified 2mo ago