Testing mod_rewrite and apache redirects

At CustomInk, we recently migrated from mongrel to Passenger for our Ruby on Rails website. This migration included a full rewrite of our apache configuration files.

With over 500 redirect and rewrite rules in place I needed a way to ensure my copy-n-paste skills were up to snuff and that we didn't loose any redirects along the way.

In my search for help, I found a blog post by Patrick Reagan from Viget labs that described a method for writing tests that will verify all the rewrite rules and redirects. Patrick's ideas were packaged up into a gem and available on github.

I can now write up tests like:

should_redirect "/cink/ideas/ideas.jsp", :to => "/inspiration/"

So now I can to some TDC (test-driven configuration) whenever I get a request for a new redirect.

What other methods have you used to test your rewrite rules?

_{Reposted from Nathen Harvey's blog.}