Redirect before http authentication in htaccess (not possible)

[AdrianB]

I've been trying to make a redirect from www to non-www on a directory protected by basic http authentication in an htaccess file.

What happens when someone enters www.example.com is that they are asked for authentication and when they provide the correct login/password they are redirected to example.com and presented with yet another authentication request.

From what I've read it's impossible to solve in htaccess since authentication by design always happens before redirect (se this and this for example).

The only way around this problem is to set this up in httpd.conf instead of using a htaccess file. But I can't do that on a shared server, right?

Or have I missed something and it really is solvable in htaccess?

[Vin DSL]

cURL is your friend...

[AdrianB]

I really don't see how curl would help me this time...

[Vin DSL]

Obviously...

[AdrianB]

So, would you mind explaining yourself or are you just trying to be annoying? I know the basics of what curl is, but I don't see how it would have anything to do with either mod_rewrite or basic http auth.

Curl is, AFAIK, used to transfer files. Yes it can be used with http auth, but I don't see how that would affect the limitation of http auth always happening before a redirect.

[jason]

You're right, authentication happens before redirects. There are two solutions that I can think of, though.

The easy way: ask support if they can set up a redirect in your site's <VirtualHost> entry. Unless this is something that cPanel will automatically overwrite they will probably do it for you.

The hard way: use a <Files> or <FilesMatch> directive in .htaccess to limit authentication to specific files.

<FilesMatch "(file1.htm)(file2.php)(file3.whatever)">
  #Authentication code goes here
</FilesMatch>

You might also try using <FilesMatch "*">, which would match any file. Since the redirect isn't a file it shouldn't get caught, but I haven't tested this, so I don't know what will happen.

Good luck and let us know what you figure out.

--Jason