PHP header( “Location: /404.php”, true, 404 ) does not work

http-status-code-404PHPredirect

I'd like to use the following to redirect pages that are no longer present in the database to the custom 404 page:

ob_start();
....
if ( !$found ):
  header( "Location: /404.php", true, 404 );
  exit();
endif;

But this actually does not redirect, but just shows an empty page (because of the exit() call before any output to the browser).

I've also tried the following:

if ( !$found ):
  header( "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found" );
  exit();
endif;

With a 'ErrorDocument 404 /404.php' in my .htaccess file, but this also just shows an empty page.

And if I do this:

if ( !$found ):
  header( "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found" );
  header( "Location: /404.php" );
  exit();
endif;

It does redirect, but with a 302 header.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best Answer

I know it's a old issue but I just found it handy:

php set status header to 404 and add a refresh to correct page, like a 2 seconds after.

header('HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found');
header("Refresh:0; url=search.php");

Then you have the 404 page showing up a few second before redirecting to fx search page.

In my case, Symfony2, with a exception listener:

$request  = $event->getRequest();
$hostname = $request->getSchemeAndHttpHost();
$response->setStatusCode(404);
$response->setContent('<html>404, page not found</html>');
$response->headers->set('Refresh', '2;url='.$hostname.'/#!/404');

time ( 2) can be 0.2 if you wish very short time.

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