.htaccess redirect to 404 if no match

Question

I've tried a few threads, but can'y seem to match what I need.

I have some htaccess code to serve a category page as follows:

RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ category.php?s=$1 [L,QSA]

The QSA flag is on there to basically serve some filters to the page. I only have 4 categories, so for arguments sake my category URL's will be:

http://domain.co.uk/category-url-1
http://domain.co.uk/category-url-2
http://domain.co.uk/category-url-3
http://domain.co.uk/category-url-4

The problem I am having and can't resolve is that I need to match these categories in htaccess and if they don't exist, then redirect to a 404 page. The category URL's will not change, so I can hard code this.

Currently on my category page, I have the PHP code:

header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
header("Location: /404.php");

... if a match isn't found... but technically all this is doing is showing as a 302 as the category page exists and is processing the code first. I've checked these headers online and they give the 302.

Is there a way to hard code this in htaccess, if those categories above are not matched?

Answer 1

Because, from what I understand of your question the mod_rewrite will always goto a page that does exist (category.php), you have to set the 404 error generation within the category.php page,

Don't bother setting the 404 error header separately, simply

    if (no match with categories){
     //header("Location:404.php",TRUE, 404);
      header("Location:404.php");
      exit;
    }

From what I know of .htaccess it can't read if the data that it is processing (the category URL) is valid or not, as in, it can't tell you if the category is genuine or false because that is something that can only be defined by the PHP script.

sorry I missed out the Location: part of the header

update

I think the loop that you reference, David, is that while the PHP file redirects to the 404.php page, the .htaccess is trying to match this to your rewrite rules, so you need to add checks to only rewrite URLs that are not referencing files or folders that already exist so, in your .htaccess :

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ category.php?s=$1 [L,QSA] 

This will only rewrite URLs if they do not point to a file or folder that exists before the rewrite.

Update edit 2

The issue develops that now the OP wants the errors of the 404 pages to be noticed as 404 errors by the SEO aspects of the website, this is not done by header("Location:") because by its nature header location is a redirect.

So: Reading up on here: Why won't my PHP app send a 404 error? I think the issue is that because PHP sets the status code to 404, file not found, that then it becomes that PHP pages responsibility to output a 404 file. So rather than setting a header Location redirect, the header should be set as a 404 error header and then after the header the 404 error page can be output on the category.php page as an include in the category page,

So, solution, when the category.php page has a invalid category call, it needs to output a header with a 404 in it:

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

immediately followed by the category page outputting the message to the browser, which will be including the 404.php

such as :

<?php
if (!category match){
    header('HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found');
    include "404.php";
}

I do not know how your 404.php is set up but you may need to adjust the code to output the include file with a return value in the 404.php, This should then cause the incorrect category codes to be displayed with 404 error headers for SEO purposes.

Answer 2

In your PHP you should check if its category-url-1, 2, 3 o 4. You can do this by creating an array in your PHP document f.e.:

<!-- language: lang-php -->
$allowed_categories = array('category-url-1'
                             ,'category-url-2'
                             ,'category-url-3'
                             ,'category-url-4'
                           );

if (!empty($_GET['s']) && in_array($_GET['s'], $allowed_categories))
{
    echo 'Yes! The category exists!';
}
else
{
    header('HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found');
    echo 'The page is not found!';
}

If you want to redirect it to a specific 404.php file, then a header with a redirect is enough. You have to make sure, sending the 404 header is specified in your 404.php file.