Why won t my PHP app send a 404 error

Question

if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php          header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        Why wont this work  I get a blank page

User · Answer

I came up to this problem   I think that redirecting to a non existing link on your server might do the trick   Because the server would return his 404  header  Redirect abbb 404 nonexist     lt  that doesnt exist for sure

User · Answer

if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php         header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        echo   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt        echo  The page that you have requested could not be found        exit        If you look at the last two echo lines  that s where you ll see the content  You can customize it however you want

User · Answer

Your code is technically correct   If you looked at the headers of that blank page  you d see a 404 header  and other computers programs would be able to correctly identify the response as file not found   Of course  your users are still SOL   Normally  404s are handled by the web server      User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  No  I don t  404  Here s a page to display for 404s    The problem is  once the web server starts processing the PHP page  it s already passed the point where it would handle a 404   User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  Yes  I do  it s a PHP page   It ll tell you what the response code is PHP  Hey  OMG 404        Webserver  Well crap  the 404 page people have already gone home  so I ll just send along whatever PHP gave me   In addition to providing a 404 header  PHP is now responsible for outputting the actual 404 page

User · Answer

For the record  this is the all-case handler    lt  php header   SERVER  SERVER PROTOCOL     404 Not Found    header  Status  404 Not Found       SERVER  REDIRECT STATUS     404    gt   lt  -- 404 contents below this line -- gt

User · Answer

if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php         header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        echo   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt        echo  The page that you have requested could not be found        exit        If you look at the last two echo lines  that s where you ll see the content  You can customize it however you want

User · Answer

If you want to show the server   s default 404 page  you can load it in a frame like this   echo   lt iframe src   something-bogus  width  100   height  100   frameBorder  0  border  0  scrolling  no  gt  lt  iframe gt

User · Answer

That is correct behaviour  it s up to you to create the contents for the 404 page  The 404 header is used by spiders and download-managers to determine if the file exists   A page with a 404 header won t be indexed by google or other search-engines   Normal users however don t look at http-headers and use the page as a normal page

User · Answer

A little bit shorter version  Suppress odd echo   if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php       header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found      exit   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt  nThe page that you have requested could not be found

User · Answer

If you want the server   s default error page to be displayed  you have to handle this in the server

User · Answer

Since php 5 4 you can now do http response code 404

User · Answer

Load default server 404 page  if you have one  e g  defined for apache   if strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php       header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found      readfile  404missing html      exit

User · Answer

if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php         header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        echo   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt        echo  The page that you have requested could not be found        exit        If you look at the last two echo lines  that s where you ll see the content  You can customize it however you want

User · Answer

That is correct behaviour  it s up to you to create the contents for the 404 page  The 404 header is used by spiders and download-managers to determine if the file exists   A page with a 404 header won t be indexed by google or other search-engines   Normal users however don t look at http-headers and use the page as a normal page

User · Answer

Try this   if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php          header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        echo   lt head gt  lt title gt 404 Not Found lt  title gt  lt  head gt        echo   lt h1 gt Not Found lt  h1 gt         uri     rtrim dirname   SERVER  PHP SELF                 echo   lt p gt The requested URL    uri   was not found on this server  lt  p gt        exit

User · Answer

A little bit shorter version  Suppress odd echo   if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php       header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found      exit   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt  nThe page that you have requested could not be found

User · Answer

If you want the server   s default error page to be displayed  you have to handle this in the server

User · Answer

That is correct behaviour  it s up to you to create the contents for the 404 page  The 404 header is used by spiders and download-managers to determine if the file exists   A page with a 404 header won t be indexed by google or other search-engines   Normal users however don t look at http-headers and use the page as a normal page

User · Answer

If you want to show the server   s default 404 page  you can load it in a frame like this   echo   lt iframe src   something-bogus  width  100   height  100   frameBorder  0  border  0  scrolling  no  gt  lt  iframe gt

User · Answer

For the record  this is the all-case handler    lt  php header   SERVER  SERVER PROTOCOL     404 Not Found    header  Status  404 Not Found       SERVER  REDIRECT STATUS     404    gt   lt  -- 404 contents below this line -- gt

User · Answer

try with   header  Status  404 Not Found    header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found      Bye

User · Answer

You re doing it right though it could use some refining  Looks like that s been addressed so let s talk practical application benefits   An old website of ours that has a large collection of multilingual tech docs was executing this inside an if else conditional       if   lt no file found gt            die  NO FILE HERE            The problem  besides the unhelpful message and bad user experience  being that we generally use a link crawler  in our case integrity  to check out bad links and missing documents  This means that we were getting a perfectly correct 200 no error response telling us that there was a file there  Integrity didn t know that we were expecting a PDF so we had to manually add a 404 header with php  By adding your code above the die  because nothing afterwards would execute and header should always be before any rendered html anyway   integrity  which behaves more or less like a browser  would return a 404 and we would know exactly where to look for missing files  There are more elegant ways of telling the user that there is an error  but by serving a 404 error you are not only notifying browsers and browser-like programs of the error but  I believe-correct me if I m wrong  are also recording those errors in your server logs where you can easily grep for 404s       header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        die  NO FILE HERE

User · Answer

If you want the server   s default error page to be displayed  you have to handle this in the server

User · Answer

Your code is technically correct   If you looked at the headers of that blank page  you d see a 404 header  and other computers programs would be able to correctly identify the response as file not found   Of course  your users are still SOL   Normally  404s are handled by the web server      User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  No  I don t  404  Here s a page to display for 404s    The problem is  once the web server starts processing the PHP page  it s already passed the point where it would handle a 404   User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  Yes  I do  it s a PHP page   It ll tell you what the response code is PHP  Hey  OMG 404        Webserver  Well crap  the 404 page people have already gone home  so I ll just send along whatever PHP gave me   In addition to providing a 404 header  PHP is now responsible for outputting the actual 404 page

User · Answer

Your code is technically correct   If you looked at the headers of that blank page  you d see a 404 header  and other computers programs would be able to correctly identify the response as file not found   Of course  your users are still SOL   Normally  404s are handled by the web server      User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  No  I don t  404  Here s a page to display for 404s    The problem is  once the web server starts processing the PHP page  it s already passed the point where it would handle a 404   User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  Yes  I do  it s a PHP page   It ll tell you what the response code is PHP  Hey  OMG 404        Webserver  Well crap  the 404 page people have already gone home  so I ll just send along whatever PHP gave me   In addition to providing a 404 header  PHP is now responsible for outputting the actual 404 page

User · Answer

if   SERVER  PHP SELF        index php        header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found       echo   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt       echo  The page that you have requested could not be found       die      never simplify the echo statements  and never forget the semi colon like above  also why run a substr on the page  we can easily just run php self

User · Answer

Another solution  based on  Kitet s   header   SERVER  SERVER PROTOCOL     404 Not Found    header  Status  404 Not Found       SERVER  REDIRECT STATUS     404    If you don t know which web page is in use  use any page that doesn t exists  handle   curl init  http        SERVER  HTTP HOST      404missing html    curl exec  handle     If you are programming a website that hosted in a server you do not have control  you will not know which file is the  404missing html   However you can still do this   In this way  you provided exactly the same outcome of a normal 404 page on the same server  An observer will not be able to distinguish between an existing PHP page returns 404 and a non-existing page

User · Answer

Try this   if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php          header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        echo   lt head gt  lt title gt 404 Not Found lt  title gt  lt  head gt        echo   lt h1 gt Not Found lt  h1 gt         uri     rtrim dirname   SERVER  PHP SELF                 echo   lt p gt The requested URL    uri   was not found on this server  lt  p gt        exit

User · Answer

if   SERVER  PHP SELF        index php        header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found       echo   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt       echo  The page that you have requested could not be found       die      never simplify the echo statements  and never forget the semi colon like above  also why run a substr on the page  we can easily just run php self

User · Answer

Load default server 404 page  if you have one  e g  defined for apache   if strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php       header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found      readfile  404missing html      exit

User · Answer

That is correct behaviour  it s up to you to create the contents for the 404 page  The 404 header is used by spiders and download-managers to determine if the file exists   A page with a 404 header won t be indexed by google or other search-engines   Normal users however don t look at http-headers and use the page as a normal page

User · Answer

Your code is technically correct   If you looked at the headers of that blank page  you d see a 404 header  and other computers programs would be able to correctly identify the response as file not found   Of course  your users are still SOL   Normally  404s are handled by the web server      User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  No  I don t  404  Here s a page to display for 404s    The problem is  once the web server starts processing the PHP page  it s already passed the point where it would handle a 404   User  Hey  do you have anything for me at this URI webserver  Webserver  Yes  I do  it s a PHP page   It ll tell you what the response code is PHP  Hey  OMG 404        Webserver  Well crap  the 404 page people have already gone home  so I ll just send along whatever PHP gave me   In addition to providing a 404 header  PHP is now responsible for outputting the actual 404 page

User · Answer

I came up to this problem   I think that redirecting to a non existing link on your server might do the trick   Because the server would return his 404  header  Redirect abbb 404 nonexist     lt  that doesnt exist for sure

User · Answer

If you want the server   s default error page to be displayed  you have to handle this in the server

User · Answer

You know  in my website i created something like this            uri   SERVER  REQUEST URI             strpos strpos  uri    php            if   strpos   false            e404  The page requested by you   amp quot    SERVER  REQUEST URI     amp quot  doesn t exists on this server             maybe str replace   php      uri            maybe str replace         maybe           die   lt center gt  lt h1 gt 404 lt  h1 gt  lt hr gt  lt h3 gt  e404 lt  h3 gt  lt h3 gt Maybe try  lt a href  maybe gt www leaveyortexthere p ht  maybe lt  a gt   lt  center gt          i hope it helps you

User · Answer

Another solution  based on  Kitet s   header   SERVER  SERVER PROTOCOL     404 Not Found    header  Status  404 Not Found       SERVER  REDIRECT STATUS     404    If you don t know which web page is in use  use any page that doesn t exists  handle   curl init  http        SERVER  HTTP HOST      404missing html    curl exec  handle     If you are programming a website that hosted in a server you do not have control  you will not know which file is the  404missing html   However you can still do this   In this way  you provided exactly the same outcome of a normal 404 page on the same server  An observer will not be able to distinguish between an existing PHP page returns 404 and a non-existing page

User · Answer

You know  in my website i created something like this            uri   SERVER  REQUEST URI             strpos strpos  uri    php            if   strpos   false            e404  The page requested by you   amp quot    SERVER  REQUEST URI     amp quot  doesn t exists on this server             maybe str replace   php      uri            maybe str replace         maybe           die   lt center gt  lt h1 gt 404 lt  h1 gt  lt hr gt  lt h3 gt  e404 lt  h3 gt  lt h3 gt Maybe try  lt a href  maybe gt www leaveyortexthere p ht  maybe lt  a gt   lt  center gt          i hope it helps you

User · Answer

Since php 5 4 you can now do http response code 404

User · Answer

You re doing it right though it could use some refining  Looks like that s been addressed so let s talk practical application benefits   An old website of ours that has a large collection of multilingual tech docs was executing this inside an if else conditional       if   lt no file found gt            die  NO FILE HERE            The problem  besides the unhelpful message and bad user experience  being that we generally use a link crawler  in our case integrity  to check out bad links and missing documents  This means that we were getting a perfectly correct 200 no error response telling us that there was a file there  Integrity didn t know that we were expecting a PDF so we had to manually add a 404 header with php  By adding your code above the die  because nothing afterwards would execute and header should always be before any rendered html anyway   integrity  which behaves more or less like a browser  would return a 404 and we would know exactly where to look for missing files  There are more elegant ways of telling the user that there is an error  but by serving a 404 error you are not only notifying browsers and browser-like programs of the error but  I believe-correct me if I m wrong  are also recording those errors in your server logs where you can easily grep for 404s       header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        die  NO FILE HERE

User · Answer

if  strstr   SERVER  REQUEST URI    index php         header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found        echo   lt h1 gt 404 Not Found lt  h1 gt        echo  The page that you have requested could not be found        exit        If you look at the last two echo lines  that s where you ll see the content  You can customize it however you want

User · Answer

try with   header  Status  404 Not Found    header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found      Bye

[php] Why won't my PHP app send a 404 error?

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