mod_rewrite - .htacccess and pointing files up the directory tree

Hello,

I am running WAMP and working with localhost. I want to configure my local setup so it works identically as my live site. On my live site I use an absolute path, e.g.

<img src="/path/to/image.jpg" />

Now WAMP is set up normally, i.e. c:\wamp\www\my_directory. .htaccess in located in /www. However, the above src resolves to http://localhost/path/to/ instead of http://my_site/path/to/ . Essentially I need to push the resolving path up the directory tree. I've played around with RewriteBase and all sorts of RewriteRules without any luck. Can someone recommend a solution? Thanks a lot for the help.

Not really. What you "need" to do is to completely change the site where the files are coming from. That's a lot more than merely changing some directory.

Do you want all /path/to/* files to come from the live site? All JPEG images? All images?

Not at all. I just want to use this style of absolute path (src="/path/to/file.jpg") in both my local and live site. With my live site it's not an issue. It's just my local that's being a pain-in-the-***.

Lemme make sure I understand this: your problem is that some of your paths go to localhost when you want them to go directly to your live site instead?

No. I apologize. I must not be explaining myself well. Let me try again.

On my live site, src="/path/to/site.jpg" will resolve to http://www.my_site.com/path/to/site.jpg. On my local, it will resolve to http://localhost/path/to/site.jpg, bypassing the my_site.com directory altogether. I want to use my local .htaccess to make sure the image resolves to http://localhost/my_site.com/path/to/site.jpg, as expected.

Thanks for the help.

Okay... So when you're working on the site locally you need everything to come out of the C:\wamp\www\my_site.com directory? Because you actually have a "my_site.com" folder right there and that's where all the code and images and stuff reside?

Why not forgo the my_site.com folder and just put everything in C:\wamp\www?

Sorry for the delay.

Because I have multiple sites I want to work on, e.g. c:\wamp\www\my_site.com, c:\wamp\www\my_other_site.com, etc. Since \www is localhost, I can't have multiple sites unless the directories extend from \www instead of residing in \www. Again, every site build on localhost works fine, except when the path is /path/to/image.jpg.

Does that make sense? Thanks.

That's what I figured. And yes, it makes sense.

The thing is this. Imagine for a minute that you're Apache and you've just been asked for the "/path/to/site.jpg" image. Where do you go for that? How do you know it's supposed to be under my_site.com and not my_other_site.com?

You can do this pretty easily by telling Apache "if you can't find it then look in my_site.com instead", but you'll only be able to have it working for one site at a time. When you start working on a different site you'd have to go to the configuration and update it for the new site.

What would that RewriteRule look like?

At least I have one more thing up my sleeve.