Cake PHP plugin/img/ diectory throws missing method instead of 404

Question

I have a Cake PHP plugin that I have written. The plugin has its own controller so that it can serve up some dynamic code on the plugin's index page (/keyedit/ or /keyedit/index).

When images are requested from /keyedit/img/ they are served up properly. But if the image doesn't exist Cake thinks the /img/ is a method in the keyedit_controller.php and throws a missing method error. This wouldn't be so bad, but it also deletes the session cookie, breaking everything else.

How can I tell Cake to just return a 404 when files are missing from /img/ instead of falling through into the controller code?

I suppose I could add a img() method that just returns a 404, but that seems like a kludge.(ETA: Tried that, still deletes the session cookie)

Answer 1

You probably have debug > 0 in app/config/core.php. When debug is 0, missing method is the same as 404.

You can also create app/app_error.php to change behavior of errors.

Answer 2

Cake uses an .htaccess file to rewrite the original pretty URLs into something Cake can use, like this:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

Those lines make sure that the URL will only be passed to Cake (by rewriting it) if it's not an actual file you're requesting. However, if the file is missing, those rules obviously don't apply, so it'll happily pass it to Cake as well.

What you can do is add a condition to exclude any directories you know don't need Cake. E.g.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(keyedit/img|other_folder)/

Alternatively, you can exclude files based on their file extensions, like so:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css)$

Or you can edit the regular expression in the RewriteRule itself to exclude specific directories or file extensions...