VirtualHost with wildcard VirtualDocumentRoot

Question

I\'m trying to create a fallback for my virtual hosts. My configuration looks like this:

# Fetch all pre-defined hosts
         


        

Answer 1

I use them :) You forgot about switching off canonical names - unfortunately I don't know why there must be ServerAlias in my configuration - it just won't work without it - code below is tested and working

<Directory "C:/LocalServer/*/public">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    Require local
</Directory>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    # Apache will form URLs using the hostname supplied by the client
    UseCanonicalName Off

    # available aliases to use
    ServerAlias *.lab *.lab2

    # where to put them
    VirtualDocumentRoot "C:/LocalServer/%2/%1/public/"
</VirtualHost>

Answer 2

Given that you are obviously using windows for development, but (presumably) deploying to linux for production, have you thought about using a virtual machine for development?

I've written a guide for setting up here: http://otaqui.com/blog/1652/setting-up-a-virtualbox-virtual-machine-for-web-development-with-multiple-sites-using-mod_vhost_alias-and-virtualdocumentroot/ but in essence:

• Share a directory (e.g. C:\VirtualWWW) from the HOST to the GUEST
• Mount that share as /var/www in the GUEST, with www-data as the owner
• Setup vhost_alias and VirtualDocumentRoot to map subdirectories in C:\VirtualWWW to virtual host subdomains, i.e. C:\VirtualWWW\project1 is mapped to http://project1.vhost/

Setting up new projects is then as simple as creating a new directory on your host, and the virtual machine guest uses that. If you are deploying to linux, you might save yourself all sorts of headaches (filename case-sensitivity being only one).