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Header
in PHP
by
Jeff Wheeler aka nokrev : 21 June 2004
I've needed the header function in
php so many times I figured I'd write a tutorial on it. This
tutorial should help you do most of the things that the header
function is capable of. Simply put, the php header function will
send a http header to the browser.
Here is How:
The following steps should teach you everything you need to know
about php headers.
-
The http header allows you to send many
messages to the browser, the first of these that I'll explain
is the location header.
- <?php
- header("Location:
http://kirupa.com");
- ?>
-
This will send a new location to the browser
and it will immediately redirect. It's recommended to put a
full url there, however almost all browsers support relative
urls.
-
You can also control the content type that the
browser will treat the document as:
- <?php
- header("Content-Type:
text/css");
- ?>
-
You can now link to this file as css.php in
your link to your css and dynamically create your css document
depending on what browser or resolution the viewer has. This
can be really helpful when designing css that works in every
browser.
-
You can also force the browser to display the
download prompt and have a recommended filename for the
download.
- <?php
- header("Content-Type:
image/jpeg");
- header("Content-Disposition:
attachment; filename=file.jpg");
- ?>
-
This will not show the file as it usually
would in a browser, but as I mentioned before, display the
downloads prompt and the filename will automatically be set to
file.jpg regardless the filename of the php file. You can also
force the page to be displayed inline by changing the
content-disposition from attachment to inline.
- You can also send specific errors to the browser using the
header function. It's important to remember the different
error messages and what they mean.
- <?php
- header("HTTP/1.0
404 Not Found");
- ?>
- Finally, I'd like to suggest that immediately following
using a header, you use exit to make sure none of the code
after it is executed (unless of course that code is used to
make an image or needed in the file):
- <?php
- header("Location:
http://www.example.com/");
- exit;
- ?>
If you need any help with this
tutorial, I suggest before asking on the forums, looking at
php's documentation of the function
here. If you can't find
what you're looking for there, feel free to post on the forums.
Cheers!
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