How to enforce a language segment via htaccess in your uri?

Question

we have a multilingual website and everything is based on the language segment in the uri. eg.

• /en/home
• /fr/home
• /nl/home

Now I want my 404 page for a uri without a language segment to redirect to one with a language segment, preferably based on the browser language. That way my 404 page will hava a language attached.

eg. http://www.website.be/test should redirect to http://www.website.be/en/test (when EN is the browserlanguage)

At the moment this is my .htaccess file

            # Add www - only for production urls
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^website\.localhost [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^192\..+$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^dev\..+$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\..+$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

    # REMOVE TRAILING SLASH
    # Make sure it's not a directory root
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    # Catch any+all characters and throw a slash in as the last character
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.+)/$
    # Redirect to same URI sans trailing slash (and use 301 for SEO goodness)
    RewriteRule ^(.+)/$  /$1 [R=301,L]

    # Removes index.php
    RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?$1 [L]

    # Redirect based on browser accept language FR
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^fr [NC]
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(ACT=.*)
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(MOBILE_ACT=.*)
    RewriteRule ^$ /fr [L,R=301]

    # Redirect based on browser accept language EN
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^en [NC]
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(ACT=.*)
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(MOBILE_ACT=.*)
    RewriteRule ^$ /en [L,R=301]

    #NO LANGUAGE FOUND - NL = DEFAULT
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(ACT=.*)
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(MOBILE_ACT=.*)
    RewriteRule ^$ /nl [L,R=301]

Answer 1

Rather than do it via htaccess why not use EE segment tags.

{if segment_1 != "en"}{if segment_1 != "fr"}{redirect="/en/"}{/if}{/if}

I've nested so that it's an early parsed simple conditional.

Otherwise you'll be getting into the realm of settings cookies and reading them in the htaccess.

Answer 2

Used the PHP solution below in my 404 template based on Paul's suggestion, so no htaccess more:

<?php

    $segment_1 = $this->EE->TMPL->segment_vars["segment_1"];
    if($segment_1!="en" && $segment_1!="fr" && $segment_1!="nl" && $segment_1!="de")
    {
        redirect('/en/' . $segment_1, 'location', 301);
    }

    $this->EE->output->set_header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
?>