Remove index.php from Yii project URL

In this post, we'll learn how to remove the index.php from the url of a Yii project and thus make the urls more pretty and search engine friendly. Plus, they become more easy to remember. Yayyy!

Step 1 - Create htaccess

Open notepad or any other text editor, paste the following code into it :

Options +FollowSymLinks
IndexIgnore */*
RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /blog

# if a directory or a file exists, use it directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# otherwise forward it to index.php
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php)
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?$1 [PT,L,QSA]

Now on line 5 of this code, change the '/blog' with the project directory name of your project, suppose your project name is 'mywebapp' then line 5 should look like this:

RewriteBase /mywebapp

Now save this file as .htaccess in your project folder 'mywebapp', over here my project name was 'blog'.

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Step 2 - enable mod_rewrite

Goto your apache directory, find the httpd.conf file, open it using notepad and find the following line:

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Edit that line and remove the # symbol to enable loading of the module in apache. The line should now look like this:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

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Step 3 - enable url overwriting

Now in the same httpd.conf file, search for the line

AllowOverride none

Modify it like this:

AllowOverride all

now save your file and close it.

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Step 4 - edit your project configuration

Goto your Yii project directory and open the main.php file from config directory, find the following code:

'urlManager'=>array(
         'urlFormat'=>'path',
        ...

Modify it and add the following code on the third line:

'showScriptName'=>false,

Now your config file should be looking like this

'urlManager'=>array(
         'urlFormat'=>'path',
                'showScriptName'=>false,

Save the file.

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Step 5 - View project in browser

Now goto your browser and navigate to your project url, eg -

http://localhost/[project-name]

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Tada, you made it, the index.php is vanished from your urls... yippee!