How to tell the browser to display his default error page?

Question

In order to include the right file and display an error page if an error occurs, I have the following code (very simplified) :

$page = 'examplePage.php';
$page404 = '404.php';

if (file_exists($page))
{
    require($page);
}
else if (file_exists($page404))
{
    require($page404);
}
else
{
    // Tell the browser to display his default page
}

?>

To summarize :

• If I have the file, I include it.

• If I don't have the file, i include the error file.

• What if the error file does not exist too ?

I would like it to be rendered as the default error page of the browser.

I already achieved this with Internet Explorer by sending an empty content with the HTTP error. The problem is that the other browsers don't act the same, they all display a blank page.

Is there any way to tell browsers to display their own error page ? (not only 404, but all errors : 304, 500 etc)

Thank you.

Edit : I forgot to tell you that I have the complete control on the headers I send and on the content sent in response.

Edit 2 : here is some code

// possible paths to retrieve the file
$possiblePaths = array(
    $urlPath,
    D_ROOT.$urlPath,
    D_PAGES.$urlPath.'.php',
    D_PAGES.$urlPath.'/index.php',
    $urlPath.'.php'
);

foreach ($possiblePaths as $possiblePath)
    if (file_exists($possiblePath) && !is_dir($possiblePath))
    {
        if (!is_readable($possiblePath))
        {
            Response::setCode(403); // calls the header(403)
            self::$filePath = self::getErrorPage(403);
        }
        else
            self::$filePath = $possiblePath;
        break;
    }

if (self::$filePath === null) // no file found => 404
{
    Response::setCode(404); // call the header(404)
    self::$filePath = self::getErrorPage(404); 
}


public static function _getErrorPage($code)
{
    if (is_readable(D_ERRORS.$code.'.php')) // D_ERRORS is the error directory, it contains files like 404.php, 403.php etc
        return D_ERRORS.$code.'.php';
    else
    {
        /*-------------------------------------------------*/
        /* Here i go if the error file is not found either */
        /*-------------------------------------------------*/

        if ($code >= 400)
            Response::$dieResponse = true; // removes all output, only leaves the http header
        return null;
    }
}
?>

And here is when I print the content :

    <?php
    if (self::$dieResponse)
    {
        self::$headers = array(); // no more headers
        self::$content = ''; // no more response
    }
    http_response_code(self::$code); // HTTP code
    foreach (self::$headers as $key => $value)
        header($key.': '.implode(';', $value)); // sends all headers
    echo self::$content;
    ?>

---

Edit : here are some screenshots to explain what I want.

This is what i've got in IE :

This is exactly what i want.

Now, in all the other browsers, I've got a blank page. I don't want a blank page.

I want, for example, Chrome to display this :

Answer 1

Default error pages

Web Browsers shows default error pages if content is blank, eg. create a empty PHP file (error.php) and put this:

<?php
   $status = http_response_code();
   switch ($status) {
     case 404:
     case 500:
        exit;//terminate script execution
     break;
     ...
   }

In .htaccess put:

ErrorDocument 400 /error.php
ErrorDocument 500 /error.php

Custom error pages

1. Using HTTP status

   You can use http_response_code() for GET current HTTP status, .htaccess file content:

   ErrorDocument 400 /error.php
   ErrorDocument 401 /error.php
   ErrorDocument 403 /error.php
   ErrorDocument 404 /error.php
   ErrorDocument 500 /error.php
   ErrorDocument 503 /error.php
   

   Page error.php:

   <?php
      $status = http_response_code();
      switch ($status) {
        case '400':
         echo 'Custom error 400';
        break;
        case '404':
         echo 'Custom error 404';
        break;
        ...
      }
   

2. Using GET param

   ErrorDocument 400 /error.php?status=400
   ErrorDocument 401 /error.php?status=401
   ErrorDocument 403 /error.php?status=403
   ErrorDocument 404 /error.php?status=404
   ErrorDocument 500 /error.php?status=500
   ErrorDocument 503 /error.php?status=503
   

   Page error.php:

   <?php
      $status = empty($_GET['status']) ? NULL : $_GET['status'];
      switch ($status) {
        case '400':
         echo 'Custom error 400';
        break;
        case '404':
         echo 'Custom error 404';
        break;
        ...
      }
   

Related: How to enable mod_rewrite for Apache 2.2

Answer 2

If you need to have it display its default 404 page, before any output, do this:

header($_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"]." 404 Not Found");

See here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.header.php

So, for your code, you could modify it to:

$page = 'examplePage.php';
$page404 = '404.php';

if (file_exists($page))
{
    require($page);
}
else if (file_exists($page404))
{
    require($page404);
}
else
{
    header($_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"]." 404 Not Found");
}

?>

Note the following warning that header stuff has to be done before any other output:

Remember that header() must be called before any actual output is sent, either by normal HTML tags, blank lines in a file, or from PHP. It is a very common error to read code with include, or require, functions, or another file access function, and have spaces or empty lines that are output before header() is called. The same problem exists when using a single PHP/HTML file.

Answer 3

I asked similar question before a while ago Access apache errordocument directive from PHP

Upshot was either redirect the user to a generic 404 page (so the address changes) Header("Location: $uri_404"); or curl your own 404 page and echo it, like so:

Header('Status: 404 Not Found');

$uri_404 = 'http://'
    . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']
    . ($_SERVER['HTTP_PORT'] ? (':' . $_SERVER['HTTP_PORT']) : '')
    . '/was-nowhere-to-be-seen';
$curl_req = curl_init($uri);
curl_setopt($curl_req, CURLOPT_MUTE, true);
$body = curl_exec($curl_req);
print $body;
curl_close($curl_req);

Code credit to @RoUS

Answer 4

Maybe you could try:

header('HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found');