Fuzzy Logic on 404

Anon

When a user tries to lookup a file on my webserver (win32.4.02) and he spells it wrong (or whatever) and he gets a 404 (predefined error.htm), I'm considering
writing a PHP script that looks for the file you really want using "fuzzy logic" and "sounds-like" technology in PHP.

This might be a security risk, eh?

Should I code it?

How would I go about it?

Michael

Anon

I don't really see how that could be a security risk (please correct me here if you know about anything)... How to do it? just write a php script that does the job and tell the web server to show your php script on 404 errors...

Andreas

Anon

Aye, but then users could find one more files that "sound" (re: Soundex()) like the one they're trying to find.

Anyway, ...
Ug.

I was thinking ... how close phonetically would be good... how many numbers difference is good?

Michael

Anon

Besides, have you ever done soundex();?

Anon

The simple solution to this is:

if( $four_oh_four_error )
{
echo \"The file you requsted (<code>$request</code>) was not found. Here are some similar items:\";
include( \"http://mysite.com/search.php?bad_url=$request\" );
}

...and in your search.php script, you\'ll have some special logic to parse out URL\'s and try searching keywords or something.

I\'m not very sure about what variables you\'ll use to determine all of this stuff, but I think that phpbuilder had an article about creating custom 404 scripts a while ago. You might look at those.

For just playing around, you should try creating a 404 script to just include( \"http://www.google.com/search?q=$request\" ); ... which will run a google search on the bad url that a user typed.

Good luck!

--Robert

Anon

I think I end up writing this with Match_text (Match_Similar) or something like that last night.

Problem being, my HTTP server only allows HTM files (no parsing) on error. UG!

Maybe next revision.

Michael

Anon

try an html page with frames that opens the php page inside the main frame.
Did not try it but it might work.

Anon

On the HTML, Have you tried using .htaccess to tell the server to parse the html file as php? This does it:

First create a file on your computer and name it .htaccess

These lines in .htaccess force the server to parse the file as a PHP file. NOTE in this case I used 'index.html'. You can substitute whatever filenames you'd like to parse with PHP. Also if more than one, just copy and paste these three lines and change the file name.

<Files index.html>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

Incidentally .htaccess is a hidden file and cannot be accessed to remove it. Should you change your mind and later wish to remove it, the trick is often to upload the .htaccess again. It will often be visible until you end the ftp session and it can be selected on the server and deleted.

bob