URL rewrite examples

The examples in this page illustrate how to rewrite URLs with Transform Rules.

​​ Rewrite path of welcome page for visitors in specific countries

To have a welcome page in two languages, create two rewrite URL rules with a static rewrite of the path component:

Rewrite URL rule #1

http.request.uri.path == "/welcome.html" && ip.geoip.country == "GB"

/welcome-gb.html

Rewrite URL rule #2

http.request.uri.path == "/welcome.html" && ip.geoip.country == "PT"

/welcome-pt.html

​​ Rewrite URL query string of blog visitors

To rewrite a request to the /blog path to /blog?sort-by=date, create a rewrite URL rule with the following settings:

http.request.uri.path == "/blog"

sort-by=date

Additionally, set the path rewrite action of the same rule to Preserve so that the URL path does not change.

​​ Rewrite path of archived blog posts

To rewrite all requests to /news/2012/... to /archive/news/2012/... you must add a reference to the content of the original URL. Create a new rewrite URL rule and define a dynamic URL path rewrite using an expression:

starts_with(http.request.uri.path, "/news/2012/")

concat("/archive", http.request.uri.path)

The filter uses the starts_with() function all paths starting with /news/2012/. The dynamic path rewrite uses the concat() function to concatenate a prefix to the original URL path of the HTTP request.

​​ Rewrite path of moved section of a website

To rewrite everything under /blog/<PATH> to /marketing/<PATH> you must modify the first component of the path (/blog/). Create a rewrite URL rule and use the regex_replace() function for this purpose:

starts_with(http.request.uri.path, "/blog/")

regex_replace(http.request.uri.path, "^/blog/", "/marketing/")

The regex_replace() function matches the path component on a regular expression (^/blog/) and then provides a replacement for that match (/marketing/).

​​ Rewrite path with several URL segments to a different URL segment

To rewrite paths like /images/<FOLDER1>/<FOLDER2>/<FILENAME> — where <FOLDER1>, <FOLDER2>, and <FILENAME> can vary — to /img/<FILENAME>, create a rewrite URL rule with a dynamic rewrite of the path component:

http.request.uri.path ~ "^/images/[^/]+/[^/]+/[^/]+$"

regex_replace(http.request.uri.path, "^/images/[^/]+/[^/]+/(.+)$", "/img/${1}")

For example, this rule would rewrite the /images/nature/animals/tiger.png path to /img/tiger.png.

​​ Rewrite blog archive URLs to support a new URL format

To rewrite the URLs of a blog archive that follow the URL format /posts/<YYYY>-<MM>-<DD>-<TITLE> to the new format /posts/<YYYY>/<MM>/<DD>/<TITLE>, create the following rewrite URL rule:

http.request.uri.path ~ "^/posts/[0-9]+-[0-9]+-[0-9]+-.*"

regex_replace(http.request.uri.path, "^/posts/([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)-(.*)$", "/posts/${1}/${2}/${3}/${4}")

The function regex_replace() also allows you to extract parts of the URL using regular expressions’ capture groups. Create capture groups by putting part of the regular expression in parentheses. Then, reference a capture group using ${<NUMBER>} in the replacement string, where <NUMBER> is the number of the capture group.

​​ Serve images from custom paths

When using Cloudflare Image Optimization, you can use URL rewrites to serve images from a custom path. For more information, refer to Serve images from custom domains and paths.