[users@httpd] ErrorDocument Gurus... read this

[Jon Block <ht...@collegepublisher.com>]

I'm using the ErrorDocument directive to serve out a different file when
files are not found in one of my directories. Everything is working, but I'm
wondering if there is a way to serve out the error document file without
returning a the 403 status code to the browser. The reason is because I want
to have a certain series of pages be indexed by google and I seriously doubt
that google will take them if they are 403's. The nice thing with these
particular pages is that even if the files are not there when they are
requested, the error document will serve out the content that should have
been there so it is transparent to the end user.

Thanks,
Jon


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Re: [users@httpd] ErrorDocument Gurus... read this

[Brian Dessent <br...@dessent.net>]

Jon Block wrote:
> 
> I'm using the ErrorDocument directive to serve out a different file when
> files are not found in one of my directories. Everything is working, but I'm
> wondering if there is a way to serve out the error document file without
> returning a the 403 status code to the browser. The reason is because I want
> to have a certain series of pages be indexed by google and I seriously doubt
> that google will take them if they are 403's. The nice thing with these
> particular pages is that even if the files are not there when they are
> requested, the error document will serve out the content that should have
> been there so it is transparent to the end user.

You could specify a CGI script as the 403 (? did you mean 404 ?)
handler, and the script could supply whatever result code and headers
you want.  The script would know the path/filename that generated the
error by looking at one of the passed environment variables (REQUEST_URI
maybe, I forget) and use that to send the proper content.

For example, the 'lurker' mailing list software uses this trick -- you
setup the 404 handler for it's "cache" directory to point to the main
CGI script.  Then when a request comes in for content that has not been
generated, the script runs and generates the page, sends it to the
browser, and stores it as a static page so that the next time it's
requested Apache serves it directly & efficiently as a static file...
kind of a neat trick to cacheing dynamic content.  I think they have a
cron job to periodicly delete the cache contents to keep disk space
usage down.

Brian

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