Enter a URL
When you submit a request through the internet (web browser) requesting any URL (website) web servers search for that particular URL along with the query given by you then the server sends a response back to you according to its programming which will contain an IP address if the requested website is available and also the content. In other words, your request will trigger a packet to be sent from the server to you which is called an HTTP response.
In order to make web servers work faster htaccess file's url rewriting facility has been introduced which basically means that it ensures rapid response by allowing websites to have several urls pointing at the same htaccess file/website. For example, facebook has one htaccess file containing its log-in URL http://www.facebook.com/, Pinterest has another htaccess file with different set of instructions for public urls & guarded pages https://pinterest.com/. We can tell htaccess what URL needs to be redirected where through config rewrite commands like RewriteEngine on and RewriteCond therefore htaccess is responsible for redirecting the appropriate url to htaccess file and then htaccess sends (through web servers') HTTP response back.
"What is htaccess file?" htaccess is a hidden text file that contains several config-rewrite commands & redirections in order to control the htaccess file's functionality. In most cases, htaccess files have been placed at the root directory of your website so that it can be easily accessed from anywhere on your site. htaccess files are only visible when they are not moved or renamed and the "htaccess" string is added to any URLs you see in Google's index.
When a request reaches the server through its URL, for example by typing https://example.com/page/, if this link points to a folder without a document (default.html) residing in it, htaccess redirects your request to the htaccess file residing at root directory which contains all of htaccess commands & config-rewrite directives. htaccess then looks for the matching pattern of the requested URL and then sends you corresponding response accordingly until htoaccess reaches the end of htaccess file or there are no matched patterns left. Therefore, whenever a user type “example.com” in their browsers' address bar they are rerouted to example.com/htaccess by htaccess file so that requests made to /example.html get redirected to htdocs folder where default HTML document is present with content as per htaccess commands so those who go through this process can see the content.