We were migrating an old Salesforce-style knowledge base (URLs like \u201cWe have ~300 legacy article links still floating around. None of them can break. Fix it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n That immediately pointed to one place: dispatcher rewrite rules<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And if you’ve worked with Apache + AEMaaCS dispatcher, you already know it’s not as simple as dropping a few The naive approach looks like this:<\/p>\n It works\u2026 for a couple of redirects.<\/p>\n But for 300<\/strong> entries?<\/p>\n * Maintaining hundreds of hardcoded rules becomes painful. That wasn’t going to scale.<\/p>\n Use RewriteMap<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Instead of writing hundreds of conditional rewrite rules, keep a lookup file and let Apache resolve redirects based on the article slug.<\/p>\n Here’s what the local setup looked like:<\/p>\n What’s happening here:<\/p>\n * Apache extracts the value of So the dispatcher config stays clean, and the redirect list lives outside the rewrite logic.<\/p>\n Local dev was straightforward: I used On AEMaaCS, that approach doesn’t work because you can’t SSH into dispatcher instances and drop files wherever you want. That’s where managed rewrite maps<\/strong> become extremely useful.<\/p>\n Create a text file in DAM:<\/p>\n The format is simple: one mapping per line.<\/p>\n (Keep it consistent: Add the config file here:<\/p>\n And include something like:<\/p>\n What happens next is the best part:<\/p>\n * AEMaaCS fetches the DAM text file from Publish. So if you want to add a new redirect tomorrow, you don’t touch dispatcher code. You just update the DAM file, publish it, and within a few minutes (based on No pipeline run, no redeploy, no downtime.<\/p>\n Make sure the This started as a panic moment (\u201coh no, 300 redirects\u201d) and ended up becoming a solid pattern.<\/p>\n Now redirect maintenance is just a DAM update\u2014something even non-dev teams can handle\u2014while dispatcher rules stay stable and predictable. Sometimes the best fix isn’t writing more config. It’s using the platform feature that was built for exactly this problem.<\/p>\n\/apex\/ArticleDetails?<\/code>) into AEM as a Cloud Service. Everything looked fine\u2026 until the business came back with a hard requirement:<\/p>\nRewriteRule<\/code> lines and calling it done.<\/p>\n
\nFirst Attempt (and why it failed)<\/h2>\n
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} =\/apex\/ArticleDetails [NC]\r\nRewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)article=WaysToOpenAnAccount(&|$) [NC]\r\nRewriteRule ^ \/content\/data-centre\/us\/en\/home\/our-products\/current-accounts\/online-bank-account-opening.article.html [R=301,L,QSD]<\/code><\/pre>\n
\n* Every new redirect requires a dispatcher redeploy.
\n* Business teams can’t manage it without engineering help.<\/p>\n
\nSolution<\/h2>\n
\nLocal Setup<\/h2>\n
RewriteMap articles dbm=sdbm:\/tmp\/rewrites\/articles.map\r\n\r\nRewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^\/apex\/(s\/)?ArticleDetails$ [NC]\r\nRewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)article=([^&]+)(&|$)\r\nRewriteCond ${articles:%2|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND\r\n\r\nRewriteRule ^ ${articles:%2}.article.html [R=301,L,QSD]<\/code><\/pre>\narticle=<\/code> from the query string.
\n* It checks that value in the articles<\/code> map.
\n* If it finds a match, it redirects.
\n* If it doesn’t, the request continues normally.<\/p>\n
\nMaking It Work in AEM as a Cloud Service<\/h2>\n
httxt2dbm<\/code> to convert a text file into DBM format and mounted it under \/tmp\/rewrites<\/code>.<\/p>\nStep 1: Create a DAM asset for the redirect list<\/h3>\n
\/content\/dam\/redirectmaps\/articles.txt<\/code><\/pre>\nWaysToOpenAnAccount our-products\/current-accounts\/online-bank-account-opening\r\nUpdateDebitCardPIN our-products\/debit-cards\/how-to-update-pin<\/code><\/pre>\nslug destination-path-without-extension<\/code>.)<\/p>\nStep 2: Add managed rewrite map config in dispatcher repo<\/h3>\n
dispatcher\/src\/opt-in\/managed-rewrite-maps.yaml<\/code><\/pre>\nmaps:\r\n - name: articles.map\r\n path: \/content\/dam\/redirectmaps\/articles.txt\r\n ttl: 300\r\n wait: true<\/code><\/pre>\n
\n* It converts the file into DBM format.
\n* It places the generated DBM under \/tmp\/rewrites\/articles.map<\/code> on each dispatcher.
\n* Your RewriteMap<\/code> directive now has a real file to read from.<\/p>\nttl<\/code>) the dispatcher picks it up.<\/p>\n
\nPoint to Remember<\/h2>\n
articles.txt<\/code> asset is published to the Publish\/Preview environment before deployment<\/strong> (or ship it as part of your initial rollout strategy).
\nIf dispatcher can’t fetch the DAM asset, the map won’t build and redirects won’t resolve.<\/p>\n
\nLessons Learned<\/h2>\n
\n
httxt2dbm<\/code> and mount under \/tmp\/rewrites<\/code>.<\/li>\n[QSD]<\/code> (Apache 2.4.65+) to drop the old query string cleanly after redirect.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\nFinal Thought<\/h2>\n
\nReference<\/h3>\n