404 Search Function Code
Posted February 26th, 2003 @ 11:08pm by Erik J. Barzeski
A few days ago I promised that I'd post my 404 Search Function code. Here it is (below). Let me cover a few things first. Initially, I did a preg_match after having done a file(). The file() function returns an array. That's a bit costly, so I just wrap file() with an implode() to give me the whole string. I looked, and I haven't done this before so it's possible I overlooked it, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get a remote URL (the search results page) as a string in one function. Bummer.
At any rate, I'll revise this code as necessary. Submit your suggestions. Consider this code in the public domain, and use it as you see fit. If you feel like being nice, credit me. If you feel like being really nice, send me a case of Coke. If you feel like the code is crap and there's nothing to be nice about, do me the favor of telling me why.
Wrap this up in a 404.php file and set your .htaccess file to read "ErrorDocument 404 /404.php" or something.
<?
$search_term = substr($REQUEST_URI,1);
$search_term = urldecode(stripslashes($search_term) );
$search_url = 'http://blah.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=';
$full_search_url = $search_url . $search_term;
$full_page = implode("", file($full_search_url) );
$search_string = '/<h3 class="title"><a href="([^"]*)"/';
$count = preg_match_all($search_string, $full_page, $matches);
if(1 == $count)
header("Location: {$matches[1][0]}");
else
header("Location: $full_page");
?>
Got questions? Check out Vinay's source or Christopher Holland's source.
Donate Life
Posted 27 Feb 2003 at 12:12am #
404 Search
Erik J. Barzeski has released his 404 search function code. I have in turn, integrated it into my site. The way the code works is that if you decide that you want to visit http://www.toomuchsexy.org/FOO, and that does not exist, you will either be redi...
Posted 27 Feb 2003 at 12:15am #
It seems to work perfectly. Thank you so much, this is awesome.
Posted 27 Feb 2003 at 12:41am #
404 search
erik, as promised, released his 404 search function code today. i just finished uploading it, as my 404 page and
Posted 28 Feb 2003 at 1:18am #
Works nicely. Of course, now you realize you can add the logic in here to redirect people with old URLs to the new location ... right? 🙂
Something I think I'll be doing on my own site.
Posted 28 Feb 2003 at 1:26am #
design tweaks
I've reduced the size of the fonts all around so the place was a little more friendly on smaller screens. Since most browsers can raise the size of fonts if you need them I figured it wasn't a bad tradeoff.
Posted 01 Mar 2003 at 4:40pm #
404 Search Function
You can now type "kenshin.cwru.edu/searchterm or terms" and instead of giving you a 404 page saying whatever not found, you
Posted 02 Mar 2003 at 1:14am #
My only complaint, but I don't think you can control this.
When someone does a search like this, MT's activity log shows the IP of the server hosting MT as doing the search since, technically, it is. It would be nice to somehow trick MT into posting the IP of the person doing the search as opposed to the host computer's IP.
Posted 03 Mar 2003 at 6:05pm #
I predict this functionality will become extremely common on web sites. It's a no brainer.
Posted 15 Apr 2003 at 10:53pm #
404 Search Page...
Erik created a wonderful 404 search function. It requires only PHP. This explains what it does. I think this one
Posted 16 Apr 2003 at 12:35am #
Sweet! Probably a good idea to stripslashes() on $searchterm, though: a search for what's up returns no results for what\'s up.
Posted 16 Apr 2003 at 8:22am #
You are right and I've added this as of, well, just now.
Posted 16 Apr 2003 at 7:29pm #
Hi, nice work, a tried to use this for my site without MT 🙂
One remark to the value $search_string:
it matched nothing at me, only if the <, > and " are escaped. Then it worked 😉
Posted 17 Apr 2003 at 1:30am #
No more 404's
I just implemented a very nice little PHP script for my website that ties into my site search function — the end result being that my site no longer has a "404 File Not Found" error page!
Posted 19 Apr 2003 at 5:43pm #
OK, this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. Has now been implemented on my page 🙂
Posted 22 Apr 2003 at 6:22pm #
Great idea! I never considered anything like this, though I am well aware of the neatness of PHP.net's search function. Let me show you what I used, quite similar:
$keyword = urlencode(substr($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], 1));
header("Location: http://mt.irssi.dk/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=".$keyword);
As a side note, if anyone plans to make the searching-program, make sure you urldecode whateveer's being sent before you hatch into it. Try and search for something with spaces in on PHP.net and you'll see what I mean. (Except of course foo bar as it leads directly to a very useful page, hehe -- coincidence? Oh well.)
Best regards,
Simon Shine
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 6:24pm #
Lost much
I used NSLog();'s 404 Search Function code to redo my 404 page. If you're searching for something you can either use the search box or simply place what you're looking for in the url. Typing "http://www.lunanina.com/blah" where blah is the search word ...
Posted 29 Apr 2003 at 12:42pm #
404 Search Function...
So, I'm currently working on migrating this "big-ass" web site over to a new technology and site architecture. One of
Posted 29 Apr 2003 at 6:53pm #
Sinnlose Spielerei oder Feature?
Ich hatte gerade mal einen Moment Zeit, und da habe ich ein kleines Feature eingebaut, das ich bei NSLog(); gefunden
Posted 30 Apr 2003 at 3:08pm #
404 Automatic Search
By using Erik Barzeski’s 404 Seaerch Function, 404 errors on this web site are now redirected directly to a search and if there is only one match, the page closest resembling your query. In simpler terms, if you type in...
Posted 11 May 2003 at 12:46am #
Anyone noticed strange PHP interactions with this? If I make my 404 error page a PHP script, the REQUEST_URI when the script is evaluated points not the user's munged URL, but rather to my error page. For what it's worth, the virtual server approach my hosting service uses requires a full URL for the ErrorDocument to work; this might be the source of the problem.
Posted 13 May 2003 at 10:36am #
Turns out my problem is due to hosting service weirdness; I can only do an ErrorDocument with an absolute URL, and doing so loses the referer info.
Posted 14 May 2003 at 6:19pm #
Sending 404's to search
After some struggle and help from our hosting service, we've managed to get Eric's 404 Search hack to work here on XMLHead. So now, if you put something after the "http://www.xmlhead.com/", it will actually search through the articles for matches...
Posted 16 May 2003 at 3:43pm #
A few changes
With a modified version of Eric's 404 code (incorporating a bit of a hack from Simon Shine, I feel that I'm ready to fully incorporate my old entries. That process will probably be complete after I've returned from a trip...
Posted 17 May 2003 at 7:30pm #
MovableBlog.com responds to Dave Winer's request for "Edit this Page" functionality. Good idea. If I had a place to hide that on my site, I...
Posted 20 May 2003 at 2:43am #
Searching of Entries
I'm not sure it'll ever get used, but after viewing Erik J. Barzeski's blog and looking at his pretty clever search script I had to implement it! I thought it was done using some really clever RewriteRule in a .htaccess but instead using a clever PHP s...
Posted 20 May 2003 at 10:57am #
404 -> Search Page
When you try to access an address on a site that doesn't exist, you get a 404 error. What you should get is an attempt to find the page you're after and, if that doesn't work, a search page where you can enter a string of your own devising. Than...
Posted 20 May 2003 at 1:16pm #
Etan, you can change one line in the code to get it to correctly search from your IP address.
In the last line of code change:
echo $full_page;
to:
header("Location: $full_search_url");
Works for me.
Also the script doesn't work really well if your blog directory isn't the base directory of the server, since the substr just chops the first slash off. I've edited it to handle blogs in subdirectories—or, more specifically, a certain subdirectory (in my case /mt/exordium/). I'm not exactly a PHP guru so there might be a better way—maybe just split the string by "/" and then just use the last item. Anyway, for now just change the first lines to read...
$URI_prefix = "/mt/exordium/";
$search_preterm = str_replace($URI_prefix,"",$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
//$search_term = substr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],1);
$search_term = stripslashes($search_preterm);
(Also, I changed to PHP 4.3 compliant global variable names, so you may have to change it back to 'REQUEST_URI' if you don't have a new version of PHP)
Posted 21 May 2003 at 1:28am #
404 Error Search Redux
I noticed an entry over on Antipixel about Erik's code for redirecting "404 File Not Found" errors to a search page. Well, I looked at the code and decided that I wanted to play around with it to make it
Posted 01 Jun 2003 at 6:35am #
404 code
NSLog(); - 404 Search Function Code Redirect to blog search...
Posted 15 Jun 2003 at 6:06pm #
404 errors and searches
I saw a way to re-direct 404 errors to the Movable Type search function on the site NSLog();. So I wanted to implement this on my site. My first hurdle was converting it to ASP. Here's what I came up...
Posted 12 Jul 2003 at 10:54pm #
MovableBlog.com responds to Dave Winer's request for "Edit this Page" functionality. Good idea. If I had a place to hide that on my site, I...
Posted 28 Oct 2003 at 10:59pm #
check out this RSSphp script
Posted 17 Apr 2004 at 4:55am #
http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/004916.php
Posted 10 May 2004 at 3:50pm #
Some security and scalability concerns have been raised about this solution at ScriptyGoddess. You might want to take a look at their discussion for some ideas on how to improve on this great idea.
Posted 10 May 2004 at 3:58pm #
None of the points raised in the discussino at ScriptyGoddess are important. As Etan primarily points out, anyone wishing to "hurt" your server can hit up mt-search.cgi directly. Adding checks for load balancing, etc. are nice perks, but I'm also a fan of KISS. I'm already running a modified version of this script anyway.
Posted 19 May 2004 at 11:15pm #
send search results instead of a 404
i'm not convinced this is the right option for any of my sites, but just the idea of giving users' the results of a search instead of a 404 page is really great. there's gotta be something up on nelson's...
Posted 18 Jul 2004 at 5:21am #
Error 404 Search script
I noticed that, Erik J. Barzeski over at NSLog(); had a cool search script written in PHP, that when you go to a URL, such as:
http://www.forbiddenbyte.co.uk/search for me
It searches your site. Very cool indeed. And the good thing is, is tha...
Posted 22 Dec 2004 at 6:21am #
I need to Search the words from a website...I need to write a search function for it... plz help me out
Posted 14 Nov 2005 at 9:07am #
I last wrote about the 404 Search in February 2003 (both here and here. Since that time, I've been using the 404 search code quite heavily on every site with MovableType (or any other blogging package). It's undergone some improvements,...
Posted 30 Dec 2010 at 5:31am #
I prefer a 404 error page, I dont like to being redirected.
Cheers an god work