[RESOLVED] Header () Redirection Error

[GrexP]

I had a similar problem a few weeks back where I read 3 or 4 tutorials on using session_start() . All of the tutorials said just about the same thing, but left out the important detail that it must be above any HTML code. I have a feeling this is something similar. There is one little detail I'm missing.

Here is the code. I tried it with several different URLs from my own site, but Google.com is here just as an example. These are the only lines of code on the page. No other PHP or HTML and I get the error message below.

 <?php 
	header("Location:http://google.com");
   ?>

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /mypage.php:1) in /mypage.php on line 2

So what am I missing?

Greg

[NogDog]

It is the exact same root cause: both header() and session_start() (as well as setcookie()) add HTTP headers to the queue of headers that will be sent as soon as any "real" output is sent. Therefore they will fail if called after any such output has been generated.

So something is causing output to be generated before your call to header(). This can be something as simple as a newline or space before your opening <?php tag. A bit more insidious is if you edited the file with an editor that saved it as UTF-8 or some other Unicode character set and included the Byte Order Mark (BOM) at the start of the file. If this could be the case, make sure that your editor is either saving the file as plain ASCII text, or else UTF-8 with no BOM.

Another "gotcha" can be if the main script includes another PHP file before one of these header functions, and that file does any output. Even a space or newline after the closing ?> tag in the included file would generate output (and thus I normally leave the closing ?> out in my PHP files, just in case).

[GrexP]

Arrrrg! Very frustrating. I removed the closing PHP tag (?>) and it worked!!!

I'm using Dreamweaver 8. I don't see an option for selecting the type of text it is being saved in. I just assumed it was plain old ASCII text.

Thanks.

Greg