Logging 404 errors, getting the URL?

Anon

Hello All,
I am writing a simple script for my site. If someone follows a link to a page not on my site it displays the fairly common 404 information. Behind the scenes I would like my script to record the offending http_referrer, the complete url they were trying to get to and the number of times that bad link has been followed. So far everything works fine. It records the 404's along with the referrer and the number of times that link has been clicked. (Now that I think about it, I may add a date/time stamp for the last attempt too). Anyway, the problem is the page they are trying to get to? Is it possible to get that information? I mean the current url would be the script I have written told to run when there is a 404. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Richard

[deleted]

REQUEST_URI would return the request that resulted in the 404

Anon

Look in the server logs. If they are set up right, its there.

Jim

rbenfield

Thanks for the reply but REQUEST_URI returns the path and file that the 404 was redirected to. Namely my 404 logging script? My 404 script is being called from the .htaccess file. So it is as if the .htaccess redirects the browser to my 404 script. It does keep the HTTP_REFERRER information correct but the REQUEST_URI changes? Any other ideas?

Thanks again for your help,
Richard

rbenfield

Thanks for the reply Jim but I dont really need it for me personally. I just like to write little scripts that are easy for other people to drop in and use. Like scripts for PHP-Nuke or one of the other php portal systems. I was hoping to be able to have a script that could just be dropped in and used without any server dependant configuration.

Thanks again for your reply,
Richard

[deleted]

REQUEST_URI should always have the requested doc...

Example, in my .htaccess i have a line

ErrorDocument 404 /path/notfound.php

And in notfound.php, $REQUEST_URI always returns the document that was not found.

I am not sure if the behaviour is different when PHP is running as CGI...Maybe that's your problem.

rbenfield

AHA! Thank You... I didn't get it after seeing your post. I started trying to simplify mine. As I did it occurred to me that you said /path/notfound.php. I was using what my host had suggested without even thinking about it, which was http://www.sitename.com/path/notfound.php. Simple as it may seem I overlooked it again and again. I tried giving a direct path to the php file (without the http://www.sitename.com) and it worked. I gather then that by having just the path and filename it is treated more like an include, while using the later results in something more like a redirect... Anyway, it is working now.

Thanks again,
Richard