Apache Expression Functions and .htaccess

[visibleman]

Hi All,

Essentially i'm wanting to Base64 encode the requested file/url and redirect to a script with it as a query string, eg -

http://localhost/awesome.html --> http://localhost/index.php?q=YXdlc29tZS5odG1s

From reading the documentation (https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/expr.html) this should technically be doable using Apache's Base64 expression function and the usual RewriteRules within htaccess, like so -

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !index\.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?q=%{base64:$1} [L,QSA]

But i'm getting absolutely no where with expression functions (have tried others like MD5/SHA1 etc) and getting them to run/output anything; expression variables (eg - ${REQUEST_FILENAME}) do work however.

Has anyone had much luck with expression functions within the .htaccess? And/or know where i'm going wrong with the above?

I appreciate this could be handled on the scripts' frontend but at the moment there's a fair few hurdles preventing me doing this hence trying to get the "easier" (oxymoron and a half) option to work.

edit - Just to add, this is using Apache 2.4.41 (supports expressions).

 

[visibleman]

Thanks @azteched and you're right from what i could tell in that expressions aren't supported in rewrite rules and seemed to be limited (to some extent) to Apache configuration files rather than htaccess.