Create an error page to handle all errors with PHP

Here’s a very simple solution to handling a variety of HTTP errors like 404, 500.. etc in one php file. All we need to do is create an array of error codes and match against them by picking up the global redirect status code using PHP. This means that we can use one page the handle multiple errors.

The Code

You’ll need to update your .htaccess file so when an error is detected the server knows how to handle the request. In our case we’re going to forward all the listed errors to our generic errors.php file.

ErrorDocument 400 /errors.php
ErrorDocument 403 /errors.php
ErrorDocument 404 /errors.php
ErrorDocument 405 /errors.php
ErrorDocument 408 /errors.php
ErrorDocument 500 /errors.php
ErrorDocument 502 /errors.php
ErrorDocument 504 /errors.php

The PHP

This is the contents of the ‘errors.php’ file. You need to save this in the root directory of your web server, unless you modify the path in the .htaccess file above.

$status = $_SERVER['REDIRECT_STATUS'];
$codes = array(
       400 => array('400 Bad Request', 'The request cannot be fulfilled due to bad syntax.'),
       403 => array('403 Forbidden', 'The server has refused to fulfil your request.'),
       404 => array('404 Not Found', 'The page you requested was not found on this server.'),
       405 => array('405 Method Not Allowed', 'The method specified in the request is not allowed for the specified resource.'),
       408 => array('408 Request Timeout', 'Your browser failed to send a request in the time allowed by the server.'),
       500 => array('500 Internal Server Error', 'The request was unsuccessful due to an unexpected condition encountered by the server.'),
       502 => array('502 Bad Gateway', 'The server received an invalid response while trying to carry out the request.'),
       504 => array('504 Gateway Timeout', 'The upstream server failed to send a request in the time allowed by the server.'),
);

$title = $codes[$status][0];
$message = $codes[$status][1];
if ($title == false || strlen($status) != 3) {
       $message = 'Please supply a valid HTTP status code.';
}

echo '<h1>Hold up! '.$title.' detected</h1>
<p>'.$message.'</p>';