In my last post I alluded to some software projects I was working on, and in the nick of time I have two ready to share before we enter 2026.
I have published and released plugins for VS Code and JetBrains (PHPStorm, WebStorm, Intellij etc) that help in testing htaccess rules so you don't have to wait until its in the cloud to see the result. The plugins were inspired by the htaccess madewithlove website that I have literally used for years and always wished existed within my editors - now it is possible.
I had made many requests over the years for this feature but was told it isn't possible or feasible for one reason or another. But I was able to get this completed in a few days.
Each plugin provides an easy to use UI panel and runs on their own isolated Kotlin (JetBrains) or TypeScript (VS Code) evaluation engine to emulate what the madewithlove website does. The goal, like the website, is not to provide a full Apache emulation but to provide just enough to test that your rewrite rules and conditions work as intended.
You can now test alongside your work in your editor without leaving to use a website and it will work for any project powered by Apache using .htaccess rule files, Drupal, Wordpress, Symfony, Laravel and more.
You can get the VS Code extension here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kevinquillen.htaccess-tester
The JetBrains IDE extension is here: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/29491-htaccess-tester
Note that the JetBrains version of the plugin works for any of their editors, not just PHPStorm.
These plugins operate completely offline and require no network access - the data is never sent anywhere and rule evaluations happen on your local machine.
I also have made the source code publicly available: