The Apache module mod_rewrite is capable of some very cool stuff. One neat trick is to use the time and date variables to control redirects and URL rewriting. This is useful if you have a URL that you don’t want to be exposed to the world until a certain date has passed - this could be the case with special offers and competitions which have a one-off static page that isn’t to be revealed until a specified date.
For example, the following directives specify that a temporary 302 redirect
should be issued for all requests to the URL /special_offer before a certain
date has passed:
RewriteCond %{TIME} <20081031000000
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /special_offer.*
RewriteRule (.*) /offers [L,R=302,QSA]
This means that the /special_offer page can be prepared and deployed
beforehand and apache will handle the transfer once the publish date has passed.
There’s a whole load of other nifty things that can be done in a similar vein
such as returning different style sheets depending on the time of day.
Digressing briefly, debugging Apache directives can be quite tricky when you’re playing around trying to get something to work. I find the easiest thing to do is to redirect to a URL which contains the variable being tested against. For example:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /debug
RewriteRule (.*) /debug/?%{TIME}&%{TIME_DAY} [L,R=302]
Then you can see what the values of %{TIME} and %{TIME_DAY} are from the URL
you’ve been redirected to. There are almost certainly better ways of doing this
but this way is quick and it works.