1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189
|
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Custom error responses</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<!-- Background white, links blue (unvisited), navy (visited), red (active) -->
<BODY
BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
TEXT="#000000"
LINK="#0000FF"
VLINK="#000080"
ALINK="#FF0000"
>
<DIV ALIGN="CENTER">
<IMG SRC="images/sub.gif" ALT="[APACHE DOCUMENTATION]">
<H3>
Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3
</H3>
</DIV>
<H1 ALIGN="CENTER">Custom error responses</H1>
<DL>
<DT>Purpose
<DD>Additional functionality. Allows webmasters to configure the response of
Apache to some error or problem.
<P>Customizable responses can be defined to be activated in the
event of a server detected error or problem.
<P>e.g. if a script crashes and produces a "500 Server Error"
response, then this response can be replaced with either some
friendlier text or by a redirection to another URL (local or
external).
<P>
<DT>Old behavior
<DD>NCSA httpd 1.3 would return some boring old error/problem message
which would often be meaningless to the user, and would provide no
means of logging the symptoms which caused it.<BR>
<P>
<DT>New behavior
<DD>The server can be asked to;
<OL>
<LI>Display some other text, instead of the NCSA hard coded messages, or
<LI>redirect to a local URL, or
<LI>redirect to an external URL.
</OL>
<P>Redirecting to another URL can be useful, but only if some information
can be passed which can then be used to explain and/or log the
error/problem
more clearly.
<P>To achieve this, Apache will define new CGI-like environment
variables, e.g.
<BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
REDIRECT_HTTP_ACCEPT=*/*, image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg <BR>
REDIRECT_HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/1.1b2 (X11; I; HP-UX A.09.05 9000/712) <BR>
REDIRECT_PATH=.:/bin:/usr/local/bin:/etc <BR>
REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING= <BR>
REDIRECT_REMOTE_ADDR=121.345.78.123 <BR>
REDIRECT_REMOTE_HOST=ooh.ahhh.com <BR>
REDIRECT_SERVER_NAME=crash.bang.edu <BR>
REDIRECT_SERVER_PORT=80 <BR>
REDIRECT_SERVER_SOFTWARE=Apache/0.8.15 <BR>
REDIRECT_URL=/cgi-bin/buggy.pl <BR>
</CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>note the <CODE>REDIRECT_</CODE> prefix.
<P>At least <CODE>REDIRECT_URL</CODE> and <CODE>REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING</CODE>
will
be passed to the new URL (assuming it's a cgi-script or a cgi-include).
The
other variables will exist only if they existed prior to the
error/problem.
<STRONG>None</STRONG> of these will be set if your ErrorDocument is an
<EM>external</EM> redirect (<EM>i.e.</EM>, anything starting with a
scheme name
like <CODE>http:</CODE>, even if it refers to the same host as the
server).<P>
<DT>Configuration
<DD> Use of "ErrorDocument" is enabled for .htaccess files when the
<A HREF="mod/core.html#allowoverride">"FileInfo" override</A> is
allowed.
<P>Here are some examples...
<BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
ErrorDocument 500 /cgi-bin/crash-recover <BR>
ErrorDocument 500 "Sorry, our script crashed. Oh dear<BR>
ErrorDocument 500 http://xxx/ <BR>
ErrorDocument 404 /Lame_excuses/not_found.html <BR>
ErrorDocument 401 /Subscription/how_to_subscribe.html
</CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>The syntax is,
<P><CODE><A HREF="mod/core.html#errordocument">ErrorDocument</A></CODE>
<3-digit-code> action
<P>where the action can be,
<OL>
<LI>Text to be displayed. Prefix the text with a quote ("). Whatever
follows the quote is displayed. <EM>Note: the (") prefix isn't
displayed.</EM>
<LI>An external URL to redirect to.
<LI>A local URL to redirect to.
</OL>
</DL>
<P><HR><P>
<H2>Custom error responses and redirects</H2>
<DL>
<DT>Purpose
<DD>Apache's behavior to redirected URLs has been modified so that additional
environment variables are available to a script/server-include.<P>
<DT>Old behavior
<DD>Standard CGI vars were made available to a script which has been
redirected to. No indication of where the redirection came from was
provided.
<P>
<DT>New behavior
<DD>
A new batch of environment variables will be initialized for use by a
script which has been redirected to. Each new variable will have the
prefix <CODE>REDIRECT_</CODE>. <CODE>REDIRECT_</CODE> environment
variables are created from the CGI environment variables which existed
prior to the redirect, they are renamed with a <CODE>REDIRECT_</CODE>
prefix, i.e. <CODE>HTTP_USER_AGENT</CODE> becomes
<CODE>REDIRECT_HTTP_USER_AGENT</CODE>. In addition to these new
variables, Apache will define <CODE>REDIRECT_URL</CODE> and
<CODE>REDIRECT_STATUS</CODE> to help the script trace its origin.
Both the original URL and the URL being redirected to can be logged in
the access log.
</DL>
<P>
If the ErrorDocument specifies a local redirect to a CGI script, the script
should include a "<SAMP>Status:</SAMP>" header field in its output
in order to ensure the propagation all the way back to the client
of the error condition that caused it to be invoked. For instance, a Perl
ErrorDocument script might include the following:
</P>
<PRE>
:
print "Content-type: text/html\n";
printf "Status: %s Condition Intercepted\n", $ENV{"REDIRECT_STATUS"};
:
</PRE>
<P>
If the script is dedicated to handling a particular error condition, such as
<SAMP>404 Not Found</SAMP>, it can use the specific code and
error text instead.
</P>
<HR>
<H3 ALIGN="CENTER">
Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3
</H3>
<A HREF="./"><IMG SRC="images/index.gif" ALT="Index"></A>
</BODY>
</HTML>
|