Can apache rewrite to external url?

You can use P flag in mode mod_rewrite rule to replace URL with mod_proxy :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^minhaPasta/$ http://outro.exemplo.com.br/outraPasta/ [P]

Now when the client requests /minhaPasta/ on your server, it will request http://outro.exemplo.com.br/outraPasta/ and send that response to the client.

You can use the mod_rewrite module.

Add the block below within <VirtualHost><Directory> in your configuration file or in .htaccess if your site is allowed to change Apache settings.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule "^public/(.*)" "https://www.producao.com.br/public/$1" [R,L]
</IfModule>

You have to activate the module if it is not already active.

Example with Linux:

a2enmod rewrite
service apache2 restart

The service must be restarted when modules are enabled / disabled. reload is not sufficient in this case.

You can even just redirect to the server without rewriting, but you may experience locks with Referer: or difficulties with using canvas images for example, because of CORS .

It is recommended to use a webproxy (using CURL for example) combined with Apache (if it is to use canvas technologies, many "html5" plugins make use of this).

Assuming the photos are all from a single domain, it would look something like:

<?php
if (empty($_GET['path']) === false) {
     echo 'Caminho não definido';
     exit;
}

$path = $_GET['path'];

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://site-externo.com/' . $path);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);

//Envia o user agente do navegador atual
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);

//Força retornar binario
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, true);

//Pega os dados
$data = curl_exec($ch);

//Fecha o curl
curl_close($ch);

$ch = NULL;

$httpcode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

if($data === false)
{
    http_response_code(404);
    echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} elseif ($httpcode !== 200) {
    http_response_code($httpcode);
} else {
    $finfo = new finfo(FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE);
    header('Content-Type: ' . $finfo->buffer($data));
    echo $data;
}

And .htaccess should look like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule "^local/public/(.*)" proxy.php?path=$1

  

note: I do not use curl much, something might be missing, please let me know if something goes wrong