IE page cannot be displayed error

dru86

I have a PHP/Mysql web application that uploads and stores documents/files from a person's local PC to the Mysql database. When I run the program in IE, sometimes it works, but mostly I get the "The page cannot be displayed" error message. Per some online advice, I turned off the "Show Friendly HTTP Error Messages" setting in Tools/Internet Options from the menu at the top of IE. This is supposed to allow you to receive a more informative error message instead of the generic non-informative error message. However, this setting change caused my application to work successfully without any errors 100% of the time. So changing the setting didn't change the information in the error message, it changed the behavior of the program and I still don't know what the real error is. Since I cannot control what every user of this application has for this setting on their PC, this application is really not useable as is. This problem doesn't occur at all in Firefox, so it seems to be an IE problem. Does anyone have any experience or advice for this problem? Thank you for your help.

greensweater

Does it occur in all versions of IE? Have you tried it on other versions? Are you using Windows with the latest service packs? Are you doing a regular file upload or is there some funky javascript going on client-side? Is this an off-the-shelf application or something you wrote???

I think I've heard that IE has a few bugs ... 😉

zzz

Try in FireFox with FireBug on, perhaps you'll be able to see errors better.

dru86

Thank you greensweater and zzz for your quick responses. I really appreciate it.

My testing has been on IE version 6 and yes I have the latest Windows service packs. I have been testing on my PC in my home office and also on PCs at our company office. On my home PC, it occasionally succeeds in IE but mostly gets the "page cannot be displayed" error. It always gets "page cannot be displayed" at the company office. It runs successfully 100% of the time in FireFox and no errors show in the Error Console on all testing PCs.

Below is my code. Perhaps you can spot something that I am missing. getfile.php prompts the user for the file they want to upload from their local PC. I'm not having any problems with this file. Then savfile.php uploads the file to the mysql database and displays details about the file uploaded back to the user. This is the file that occasionally succeeds in IE but mostly gets the "page cannot be displayed error". Thanks again for your help.

getfile.php

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title> Upload a File to the Database</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<form enctype="multipart/form-data" name="frmUploadFile" action="savfile.php" method="post">
  <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table width="75%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
    <tr bgcolor="#000066">
      <td width="100%" height="22" colspan="2">
        <p style="margin-left: 10"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="#FFFFFF">
        Upload a File</font></b>
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr bgcolor="#6699CC">
      <td width="100%" colspan="2">
        <p style="margin-left: 10; margin-right: 10"><font face="Verdana" size="2">
        <br>Please select a file from your local computer to upload and save in 
          the MBF database. &nbsp; &nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</font>
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td width="15%" nowrap bgcolor="#6699CC"> <p style="margin-left: 10"><font    face="Verdana" size="2"> File Description:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</font>      

      </td>
      <td width="85%" bgcolor="#6699CC"><input type="text" name="strDesc" size="20"           

       maxlength="50"></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td width="15%" bgcolor="#6699CC">
        <p style="margin-left: 10"><font face="Verdana" size="2">File   

         Location:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</font>
      </td>
      <td width="85%" bgcolor="#6699CC">
        <font face="Verdana" size="2">
        <input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="2000000">
        <input type="file" name="fileUpload" size="20"></font>
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td width="33%" bgcolor="#6699CC">
        <p style="margin-left: 10"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><br><br>&nbsp;</font>
      </td>
      <td width="67%" bgcolor="#6699CC">
        <font face="Verdana" size="2"><input type="submit" value="Upload this file"     

         name="cmdSubmit"></font>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</form>
</body>
</html>

savfile.php

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Save File to Database</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body>

<?php 
error_reporting(E_ALL); 

if ($_FILES['fileUpload']['error'] > 0)
{
  echo 'Problem: ';
  switch ($_FILES['fileUpload']['error'])
  {
    case 1: echo 'File exceeded upload_max_filesize'; break;
	case 2: echo 'File exceeded max_file_size'; break;
	case 3: echo 'File only partially uploaded'; break;
	case 4: echo 'No file uploaded'; break;
  }
  exit;
}

if(isset($_POST['cmdSubmit']) && $_FILES['fileUpload']['size'] > 0)
{
  $fileName = $_FILES['fileUpload']['name'];
  $tmpName  = $_FILES['fileUpload']['tmp_name'];
  $fileSize = $_FILES['fileUpload']['size'];
  $fileType = $_FILES['fileUpload']['type'];
  $fileDesc = $_POST['strDesc'];

  $fp = fopen($tmpName, 'r');
  $content = fread($fp, filesize($tmpName));
  $content = addslashes($content);
  fclose($fp);

  if(!get_magic_quotes_gpc())
  {
    $fileName = addslashes($fileName);
  }

  $link_id = mysql_connect($hostname, $user, $password);
  if (!$link_id)
  {  

    echo "<b>Error:</b> Could not connect to database.  Please try again later.";
    exit;
  }

  $db_select = mysql_select_db($database, $link_id);
  if (!$db_select)
  {  

    echo "<b>Error:</b> Could not select database.  Please try again later.";
    exit;
  }

  $query = "LOCK TABLES Test_DocStor WRITE";
  $result = mysql_query($query);

  $query = "insert into Test_DocStor   

    values(0,'$fileName','$fileDesc','$fileType','$fileSize','$content')";
  $result = mysql_query($query);
  if (!$result)
  {  

    echo "<b>Error:</b> Upload to database failed.<br>";
    echo "Error: ".mysql_errno()."; error description: ".mysql_error();
    exit;
  }

  $query = "UNLOCK TABLES";
  $result = mysql_query($query);

  echo "<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><table width='50%' align=center border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr bgcolor='#000066'><td colspan=2 align=center><font face='Verdana' size=2 color='#ffffff'>The details of the uploaded file are shown below</font></td></tr>";

  echo "<tr bgcolor='#6699CC'><td width=50% align=right><font face='Verdana' size='2'><b>File name: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></font></td><td><font face='Verdana' size='2'>$fileName</font></td></tr>";

  echo "<tr bgcolor='#6699CC'><td width=50% align=right><font face='Verdana' size='2'><b>File description: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></font></td><td><font face='Verdana' size='2'>$fileDesc</font></td></tr>";

  echo "<tr bgcolor='#6699CC'><td width=50% align=right><font face='Verdana' size='2'><b>File type: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></font></td><td><font face='Verdana' size='2'>$fileType</font></td></tr>";

  echo "<tr bgcolor='#6699CC'><td width=50% align=right><font face='Verdana' size='2'><b>File size: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></font></td><td><font face='Verdana' size='2'>$fileSize</font></td></tr>";
  echo "</table>";
} 
?>

</body>
</html>

greensweater

The php looks ok to me, maybe it's the HTML that is causing the problem. In particular, the DOCTYPE and META charset declarations. Are these really important for your application? You could try dropping them entirely in favor of

<html>
 <head>
  <title>Upload a file to the database</title>
 </head>
 <body>...

... at least to get it working. Or try some variations of said tags:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

If you error out, you're not closing your <body> and <html> tags properly, could this be the cause of the problem? Maybe instead of echo "blah" try creating a string such as $output .= "blah" then placing it into nice HTML tags at the end of the document like:

<?php
  // first the page logic
  $output = "";
  if (isset($_POST['foo']))
  {
    $output .= "You posted some foo!";
  }
  else 
  {
    $output .= "No foo in this request!";
  }
  // then the html output
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Checking for foo</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
  </head>
  <body>
    <?php echo $output; ?>
  </body>
</html>

kebbelj

Corporate security settings may partially explain why you always get that error message at work, and only sometimes at home. That could also explain why Firefox runs everything succesful. Bellsouth Parental Controls, for instance, work only if you're running IE; Firefox completely bypasses them.

bradgrafelman

Turn off the "friendly" error pages in IE settings, because "friendly" in Micro$oft $peak means "you're-honestly-too-dumb-to-understand-things-so-just-trust-me-and-let-me-show-you-some-pretty-colors-instead". :p

dru86

Thank you greensweater, kebbelj and bradgrafelman for your suggestions.

In response to greensweater: Originally I didn't have the DOCTYPE and META declarations, but later added them when checking my HTML through the W3C validator which required them. In either case, it didn't make a difference in the runtime behavior. I do have the closing </body> and </html> tags in my code. You may not have seen them in my post. I have them in the section marked "Code:", below the "PHP Code:" section.

kebbelj: I'll check with our system administrator to see if any corporate security settings are in play here. savfile.php is the only script in this application or any of my applications on the same server where I am having this problem.

bradgrafelman: Yes, turning off the "friendly" errors in IE does allow this file to run successfully. My concern though is that I do not have a way to control what every visitor to this application has for this setting. Any suggestions?

Thank you all for your help.

greensweater

I meant, if your script produces an error, it won't make it to the closing tags because it 'exits' before it gets there. I don't know if this makes IE puke. Also, in event of an error, the tables may not be explicitly unlocked which could cause more errors (unlikely, php releases db connections on script end, but possible).

bradgrafelman

Is there any chance you could post a link to this? If you don't want to share it with the entire world, you can feel free to PM it to me; I'm curious to see what's going on to make the "friendly error" setting affect whether the page loads or not.

dru86

Thanks greensweater. I understand what you mean now. I tried the suggestion you described of creating an output string then placing it inside the HTML tags. But unfortunately, it didn't make a difference. Thanks anyway.