mdBook .htaccess?

[ghost]

Is there any way to implement a .htacces file that can be used to negate the .html proceeding after the URL? I assumed that the 404 was handled by a .htaccess file but that seems to be handled through something else (presumably JS). Which leads back to my question; is there a way to remove the .html?

[ehuss]

I don't know if there is a way to rewrite the URLs to remove the .html extension. You may need to look into your webserver's configuration if that is possible, but I think mdBook's linkifier will make that difficult. I believe this is mostly a duplicate of #1563, so closing in favor of that.

[sspaeti]

I had similar questions. I guess we could do something like this in .htaccess (Apache):

RewriteEngine On

# If the request ends with a /, try to find the corresponding .html file
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])/$ $1.html [L]

This rule works as follows:

1. The RewriteCond checks if the .html file corresponding to the directory-like URL exists.
2. If it exists, the RewriteRule will rewrite the request to the .html file.

For example, with this rule:

• Accessing https://example.com/book/appendix/author/ would serve the content of https://example.com/book/appendix/author.html.
• Accessing https://example.com/book/appendix/feedback/ would serve the content of https://example.com/book/appendix/feedback.html.

As for performance concerns:

• Redirect Overhead: The overhead of such a rewrite is minimal. In most cases, the end user won't notice any delay. Apache's mod_rewrite is highly efficient. When configured properly, the performance impact is negligible for typical websites.
• Server Load: While mod_rewrite is efficient, it's important to note that for high-traffic websites, every additional rule can add some server load.

But I'd rather do something like this https://github.com/rust-lang/mdBook/issues/1563, I'm not sure if that would be a long-term solution 🤔.