Custom 404 script in Cake PHP

Question

This question is slightly related to my old post http://stackoverflow.com/questions/940326/dealing-with-alias-urls-in-cakephp/

After much thought, I am exploring the option of having a custom 404 script in my Cake App, that is reached when a URL does not map to any controllers/actions. This script would check $this->here and look it up in a database of redirects. If a match is found it would track a specific 'promo' code and redirect.

I'm thinking status codes. Can I make my script return a suitable status code based on certain conditions? For example:

1. URL matches a redirect - return a 301
2. URL really does not have a destination - return a 404.

Can I do this?

EDIT:

What about this? Anyone see any problems with it? I put it in app_controller.

function appError($method, $params) {

 //do clever stuff here

}

Answer 1

This should work. Assuming you redirect 404's at a LegacyUrls::map() controller action. The code needs to be stored in app/app_error.php:

<?php
class AppError extends ErrorHandler{
    function error404($params) {
     $Dispatcher = new Dispatcher();
     $Dispatcher->dispatch('/legacy_urls/map', array('broken-url' => '/'.$params['url']));
     exit;
    }

    function missingController($params) {
     $Dispatcher = new Dispatcher();
     $Dispatcher->dispatch('/legacy_urls/map', array('broken-url' => '/'.$params['url']));
     exit;
    }
}
?>

Good luck!

Answer 2

I've always created app\views\errors\missing_action.ctp and app\views\errors\missing_controller.ctp

Cake will automatically display one of those views when a url does not map out to a controller or its methods.

Unless there is a certain need for the error codes that you did not give, this would work perfectly!