htaccess - Rewrite files that have a directory with the same name

Question

I have a website that has multiple PHP files and directories with the same name, like so:

/projects.php
/projects
/projects/something.php

I have managed to make http://example.com/projects rewrite to http://example.com/projects.php with the following rules (using the answer here):

RewriteEngine On

# Disable automatic directory detection
DirectorySlash Off

# Hide extension
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php

This works, however, when I explicitly input the directory slash to the URL, it accesses the folder. Right now:

http://example.com/projects   -->  http://example.com/projects.php  [file]
http://example.com/projects/  -->  http://example.com/projects/     [folder]

I know why it's doing this (projects/.php isn't a file). My attempt at fixing it consisted of checking if it was a folder, and replacing the slash with nothing and accessing that instead.

New .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On

# Disable automatic directory detection
DirectorySlash Off

# Hide extension
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php

# Folder fix
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule (.*)/$ $1.php

This works as intended, however it completely messes up on the client side, as the client still has a folder in it's URL, so when it tries to fetch relative paths, it fails miserably.

Now I thought about doing a redirect with the [R=301] flag but as far as I know, %{REQUEST_FILENAME} is relative to the server, so redirecting to that wouldn't work.

If anyone could point me in the right direction, it'd be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Try putting this line at the top:

Options -MultiViews

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Your .php hiding rule should be:

RewriteEngine On

# Disable automatic directory detection
DirectorySlash Off

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.+?)/?$ /$1.php [L]