404 variable problems

burden

hello all. i'm trying to write my 404 script so that the visitor will be able to press a button and send me an email with information about the error they recieved. so far so good. (info kept in hidden fields on error404.php)

Problem i'm having is getting the file they requested. i have .htaccess setup with the ErrorDocument hooplah. which i'm gonna assume is a redirection method of some sort. i'm not so sure. i've used the variables $HTTP_REFFER with no luck (returns nothing) and $REDIRECT_URL. from what i understand these are both apache variables. everything returns NOTHING ;p $REQUEST_URI returns the error404.php page. i'm stumped. i know it can be done! i'm wondering if i might need to convert the apache variable to a string or something? i read on php.net about a lot of header info being in an array. iunno. thanks for taking the time to be there for me in my time of dispair.

Hikari

You most likley have register_globals on. try $_SERVER[HTTP_REFFER]

burden

that did nothing still...

so frustrating. all i need is a way to find out what the reffering page was. even if people were to post how they accomplished it. i've gone to several code sites and it all points me in the same direction. but doesn't work. i've had this problem on 2 other servers so i think i just might not be doing it right. here's literally what i have:

<?php

$reffer =  getenv("HTTP_REFFER");
$location = "http://$HTTP_HOST$reffer";
echo "Sorry. The page you requested, $location, does not exist";

 ?>

and what's returned is simply the $http_host

RadioGeek

Okay, well I can tell you what's wrong. "Reffer" is not how you spell "refer".

The variable you should be using is:

$HTTP_REFERER

(Note: That variable, too, is misspelled, but it is indeed the correct one. The correct spelling would be "referrer".)

Here is what I would do:

<?php

$refer =  $HTTP_REFERER;
$location = "http://$HTTP_HOST$refer";
echo "Sorry. The page you requested, $location, does not exist";

 ?>

Hikari

Originally posted by RadioGeek
Okay, well I can tell you what's wrong. "Reffer" is not how you spell "refer".

lol, I probably shoould have caught that. Problem with me is I never actually read things (that hurts me, especially with coding). Instead my eyes scan the words and just pick out the keywords. I guess its a habbit I got from IRC and the likes where the chat can scroll at quite rapid rates. Result is I don't notice spelling mistakes (often), and sometimes totally mistake the sentence for something totally diffrent :p

burden

hahaha yeh, i just realized i left out an e as a result of reading that post, but the problem still remains. contrary to what everyone else's code is, for me it doesn't work! and it's not human error. radiogeek, if that code works for you (which i know SHOULD) then i dunno what the deal is.

RadioGeek

What exactly does it print out, burden? Do you at least get the first part of the $location variable?

Hikari

ok, lets try this from scratch:

In your apache's httpd.conf:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

You can do it in the .htaccess file, but its just faster to put it in your conf. MAKE SURE THAT YOU DO NOT INCLUDE THE [url]http://[/url]<path> PART. I can't stress that enough.

Now, in 404.php:

<!-- header stuff here -->
<center><?="Sorry. The page you requested, <b>". $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] ."</b> does not exist"?></center>
<!-- All done! -->

Of course, you can do it the nice way if you don't have short tags turned on:

<!-- header stuff here -->
<center><?php
echo("Sorry. The page you requested, <b>". $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] ."</b> does not exist");
?></center>
<!-- All done! -->

Does that help at all?

[edit]

I was bored, so I made you the other option of not having it return the entire URL. For example, aaa/aaa.php?aaa=bbb would return the entire URL. This will return just aaa/aaa.php:

<?php
$requestf = explode('?', $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]);
echo("Sorry. The page you requested, <b>". $requestf[0] ."</b> does not exist"); 
?>