PHP: fire a 403 or 404 error?

Question

hey guys, fast but weird question. is it possible to kind of force a 403 or 404 error. i have a kind of admin page, where i'm trying to preven hackers from getting into my filesystem on my server. (the path get's delivered over the url and it would be possible to just pass a ../ into it and get up in my filestructure - i know that's not a good thing to do it). Anyway If somebody tries to enter a ../ into my url i'm currently just using a die('forbidden') to make sure that this area on my server is forbidden.

I was wondering now if it's actually possible to kind of fire a real forbidden 403 error? I've defined a 403 page in my .htaccess document which shows up if it's a real 403. Is it possible to kind of fire a 403 so that the .htaccess links to the 403 page. I mean I could easily hardcode it and simply link to the 403 error page. I just wondered if this is possible?

thanks for your reply.

Answer 1

Just issue

header("HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden");

before any other output.

Also make sure you double, and triple check your path sanitizer.

Answer 2

This will send a 404 and also include your 404 page:

<?php 
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found"); 
include("/var/www/html/site.domain.com/err/404.php"); 
?> 

Source: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/784.htm (from google)