How to deal with callbacks having dot in the URL with built-in PHP server?

Question

I am using Drupal site (with .htaccess and clean URLs which are working fine) within built-in PHP Development Server (run by: php -S localhost:8888) where in CMS I generate dynamically the XML file which I would like to expose, however when I am trying to open /foo/bar.xml the following error happens:

The requested resource /foo/bar.xml was not found on this server.

After investigation, it seems PHP built-in server assumes that all files containing a dot they must be the files in the local filesystem.

Is there any workaround for that?

Answer 1

According to PHP Built-in web server docs, to handle custom requests, you need to specify a "router" script (given on the command line) which returns FALSE, then the requested resource is returned as-is, otherwise the script's output is returned to the browser.

Using a Router Script

Here is simple example which handles requests for images, then display them, otherwise if HTML files are requested, it will display "Welcome to PHP":

<?php
// router.php
if (preg_match('/\.(?:png|jpg|jpeg|gif)$/', $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"])) {
    return false;    // serve the requested resource as-is.
} else { 
    echo "<p>Welcome to PHP</p>";
}
?>

Drupal 7 & 8

For Drupal 7 & 8, you can use .ht.router.php file, then run it as:

php -S localhost:8888 .ht.router.php