[SOLVED] Serving files from multiple root directories in apache

Issue

I want to create a setup in apache where my media files are split from my code (for easy project management). The idea I created is to have a root directory (/home/villermen/httpd/root) which contains all the code (php files, css files etc.) and a media directory (/home/villermen/httpd/media) which contains all non-text files.

Executing this setup has proven to be tricky. I'm trying to use mod_rewrite to serve files from the media directory if they exist, but I haven't been successful at all so far.

Here's the part of my httpd.conf in which I try to make the magic happen:

DocumentRoot /home/villermen/httpd/root
RewriteEngine on

<Directory /home/villermen/httpd/root>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    AllowOverride All

    #...other magic magoo, including rewriterules that do work
</Directory>

<Directory /home/villermen/httpd/media>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from allow
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>

#Serve from media if file exists there
RewriteCond "/home/villermen/httpd/media%{REQUEST_URI}" -f
RewriteRule "^/?(.*)$" "/home/villermen/httpd/media/$1"

Trying to access a file which exists in the media folder will still throw a 404, I'm at a loss here. Is there anything I'm not seeing?

I'm using apache 2.4 on ubuntu 14.04.

EDIT: Removing the RewriteCond altogether will still not make any magic happen. mod_rewrite should work outside of Directory tags right?

UPDATE: See @kannan-mohan's possible answer below. In the end I went for the approach of linking the media folder from the webroot to it's folder and then rewriting everything to there:

DocumentRoot /home/villermen/httpd/root
Alias /media /home/villermen/httpd/media

<Directory /home/villermen/httpd/root>
    #Serving files from media if they exists there
    RewriteCond "/home/villermen/httpd/media%{REQUEST_URI}" -f
    RewriteRule "^(.*)$" "/media/$1"
</Directory>

<Directory /home/villermen/httpd/media>
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>

Solution

If my understanding is correct what you need is as below.

1. http://example.com/media/hello.jpg should map to /home/villermen/httpd/media/hello.jpg
2. http://example.com/media/video/world.mp4 should map to /home/villermen/httpd/media/video/world.mp4
3. And in case if the file does not exist in media directory then it should through HTTP 404 fetch the image from root directory. And so http://example.com/media/video/world.mp4 should map to /home/villermen/httpd/root/video/world.mp4

---

In that case below configuration will be enough.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /home/villermen/httpd/root

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}..%{REQUEST_URI}" -f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .*\.jpg$ [OR]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .*\.mp4$
    RewriteRule (.*) "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}..$1" [L]

    RewriteRule /media/(.*) /$1 [L]

</VirtualHost>

For added safty the RewriteCond will also check if the file requested is of type jpg or mp4 and only then the rewrite happens. More media types can be added by appending [OR] flag at end of each condition.

Answered By - Kannan Mohan