Permalink to search.php failing to redirect to /search

[smaffulli (Stefano Maffulli)]

I noticed today that the permalink from search.php to External URL /search is not working properly. I get displayed a blank page, no html at all.

nginx throws a 406 error

[31/Oct/2017:17:35:42 +0000] "discussion.dreamhost.com" $IP.IP.IP.IP "GET /search.php HTTP/2.0" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0" "-" 406 211 "-" 0.379 0.379 "-"

the error on rails log shows that the permalink is somewhat processed by SearchController: is that correct? Any suggestion on how to properly redirect requests from /search.php to /search?

Started GET "/search.php" for $IP.IP.IP.IP at 2017-10-31 17:20:17 +0000
Processing by SearchController#show as 
Completed 406 Not Acceptable in 321ms (ActiveRecord: 43.6ms)

[xrav3nz]

@smaffulli

shows that the permalink is somewhat processed by SearchController: is that correct?

I’m afraid so, since there is already a Discourse(Rails) route named /search: it hits the SearchController before it can be processed by the PermalinkController.

The .php part is considered (mistaken) as the desired response format, thus the 406.

@smaffulli

Any suggestion on how to properly redirect requests from /search.php to /search?

There could be better solutions, but I think you’ll have to handle the redirect on NGINX, before it gets to Discourse:

https://www.nginx.com/blog/creating-nginx-rewrite-rules/

Maybe something along the lines of: (not tested)

location = /search.php {
  return 301 /search?$args;
}