.htaccess - Hiding a directory in the URL while preserving other files

Question

I developed a giant studio of tools and each tool has its own directory in the /tools/ folder. So if you have a tool named example, the URL would be /studio-dir/tools/e

Answer 1

You will need something like this:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule    /studio/(.*) /studio/tools/$1    [L]
 

The problem is it will not work if the requested file is both in the studio-folder and the tools-folder.

But there no way to prevent this, as the server never knows if an URL is meant to refer to /studio/tools/ or /studio/

Edit: You can remove /tools/ from the visible urls like this:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule    /studio/(.*) /studio/tools/$1    [L]
    RewriteRule    /studio/tools/(.*) /studio/$1    [L,R=302]