CakePHP + mod_rewrite on Snow Leopard

Creating a CakePHP 1.2.5 app on a Snow Leopard machine, which comes with PHP 5.3, I encountered the following error when I tried to run the app: “The requested URL /Users/username/Sites/cakeapp/app/webroot/ was not found on this server.”

The solution is to use the RewriteBase directive in ~/Sites/cakeapp/.htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  #  NOTE THE TILDE:
  RewriteBase /~username/cakeapp/
  RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
  RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

AND in ~/Sites/cakeapp/app/.htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  #  NOTE THE TILDE:
  RewriteBase /~username/cakeapp/app/
  RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
  RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

AND in ~/Sites/cakeapp/app/webroot/.htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  #  NOTE THE TILDE:
  RewriteBase /~username/cakeapp/app/webroot/
  RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
  RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>