Clean URL Redirect Loop

Question

I'm trying to create clean URLs on my website. Now I succeeded in configuring apache so every request like mysite.com/page will work. But I also want that requests for mysite.com/page.php will be redirected to mysite.com/page. I've set environment variable in .htaccess to check if i already been redirected to prevent loops, but i still get them... Here's the .htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# set the variable
RewriteRule ^$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1 [E=REWROTE:0]

# this works fine
# make mysite.com/page work and set REWROTE variable to 1
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,E=REWROTE:1]

# but if i enable this, i get redirected and then stuck in a loop
# redirect mysite.com/page.php to mysite.com/page , but only if REWROTE not 1
#RewriteCond %{ENV:REWROTE} !^1$
#RewriteRule ^(.*)\.php$ $1 [R=301,L]

Thanks!

Answer 1

Add this rule above your existing rewrite rules to stop redirecting if the request has already been redirected once (ref):

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule .* - [L]

Answer 2

You could check the request line for what has originally been requested:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\ (/[^\ ]*)\.php[?\ ]
RewriteRule \.php$ %1 [R=301,L]

Oh, and the first argument of the RewriteCond directive is not a regular expression but just a string. So the escaping the . is wrong.