Using PHP to load html page inhibits any attempt at using up to date css file

Question

Using PHP to load html page inhibits any attempt at using up to date css file

397 views Asked by puk At 11 January 2012 at 12:56

I have user permissions on my .html files other than 0744. They are actually set to 0700 so to get around this, I have suPHP set up, and I use a load.php file to access and load all the files. The file in question is a simple .html file like so:

test.html (0700):

<html>
    <head>
        <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="test.css" />
    </head>

    <body>
        <p> why is this not working?</p>
    </body>
</html>

test.css (0744):

body
{
    background-color:#bbcbde;
}    
p
{
    background-color:#bfc4de;
    color:'red' ;
    border:'solid black';
    font-size:35pt;
}

load.php (0744):

$page = $_GET['page'];
header("Location: http://www.example.com/" . $fileName);
exit;

Note: the css file I have set to normal 0744 permissions for debugging purposes.

If I type http://www.example.com/load.php?page=test.html the page loads find. However, I suspect that the css file is being used from a cache because none of the changes to test.css are applied to test.html. If I remove the line

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="test.css" />

The change is reflected as the background becomes white again. However, if I move the css file to, for example test2.css, and change the style (ie. different colors) and link to that instead, the changes are suprisingly not applied. If I move test.css to test2.css without linking to the new name (similar to deleting the file), the css effect is still applied! Similarly if I chmod test.css to 0000 it still uses the style sheet. Also I know the .css file is not corrupted because I con open up test.html locally on my machine.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on because I don't have the foggiest.

EDIT as per Murray McDonald's answer below, I traced down the problem to having to do with a 304: Not Modified status code. Why Is this being returned when the file has clearly changed?

Original Q&A

There are 2 answers

Murray McDonald On 11 January 2012 at 13:16

Whenever I run into something mysterious like this I eavesdrop on the HTTP protcol going back and forth between the browser and the server by using "fiddler2" -- it works in MSIE and Firefox. You can easily see the reuest headers the response headers request body, response body (if any) etc.

**puk** · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-11 14:08:14

I figured out what my problem (albeit with great support from Murray). I have my folders set up like so

/
├── test
│   ├── test.html
│   └── test.css
├── load.php
└── test.css

I thought that

header("Location: http://www.example.com/" . $fileName);

would launch the page from within the correct folder, but even if I type the following into the browser

http://www.example.com/load.php?page=test/test.html

module.php, when searching for test.css returns /test.css and not /test/test.css which is what I want. Now, the question is how I tell php to set the working directory.

TechQA.

Using PHP to load html page inhibits any attempt at using up to date css file

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