title: Write a .htaccess file in PHP?
body: <p>On my PHP site I would like to sometimes show a maintenance page to users.  I know I can do this in PHP very easily but I would rather use an htaccess file, I think performance may be better this way.  So what I am wanting to know is can I modify a htaccess file in PHP?  If it is possible I am thinking either,  </p>
  
  <p>1 - Have to files and 1 will have the code below in it and the other will not, both files would contain my other htaccess stuff as well.  Then php can rename these 2 files when I run an admin script to switch which file is shown, by changing it's name to .htaccess  </p>
  
  <p>2- Read the contents of the current .htaccess file and APPEND the code below into it, then also be able to remove it from the file if needed.</p>
  
  <pre><code>RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase / 
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/maintenance\.php$
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/maintenance.html [R=307,L]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My goal is to build an admin script that can have 1 click processing to change the maintenance page to show or not to show.</p>
  
  <p>Please any sample code or tips on how to do this or if it is even possible to modify a .htaccess file from PHP</p>