mod_rewrite & .htaccess can't pass variables in OS X Yosemite

Question

I have a simple rewrite rule, which works fine as expected:

RewriteRule ^user/(\w+)/?$  user.php?id=$1

I have a php file with:

<?php echo $_GET['id']; ?>

That works fine with the following URL, and id gets passed no problem:

http://localhost/user?id=JoeUser

I know that mod_rewrite is working because this url also sends me to user.php:

http://localhost/user/JoeUser

But JoeUser is never actually passed to $1. I have never seen this behaviour before. Is it a bug in OS X, or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Is it a bug in OS X?

No this is not a bug. This is effect of MultiViews option which is enabled by default in your Apache config. Option MultiViews is used by Apache's content negotiation module that runs before mod_rewrite and makes Apache server match extensions of files. So /file can be in URL but it will serve /file.php.

To turn it off use:

Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^user/(\w+)/?$ user.php?id=$1 [L,QSA,NC]