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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?

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2 Answers 2

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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.

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7 Comments

thanks, I'll give it a try. Any advice as to what I should look for?
An easier solution if you use chrome (or can't get fiddler2 in linux) here stackoverflow.com/a/3019085/654789
well your answer was hugely helpful. It shows 304: Not Modified.
Yeah that's what one would expect -- the question now is why does it think it hasn't been modified? Is there an HTTP HEAD request being sent by your browser -- I've seen cases where the file was cached by an ISP and the request isn't even getting to the target server -- you need to look at the server's log to see if the requet is making it o the server -- if it isn't then you need to send out the correct headers to ensure your file can only be cached by the end user and not in any intermediate caches along the way
I just stated below how I had two .css files. All I had to do to fix it was issue a chdir command in load.php it's funny b/c it was loading test.html in the current folder, not in the folder specified by its absolute path =P
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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.

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6 Comments

Its your web server that resolves URLS and maps them to files in the file system. Are you using Apache as the server?
yes apache2.0, and had I typed http://www.example.com/test/test.html apache would have been smart enough to load test/test.css but for some reason, when returned from load.php it's not smart enough to do this. It's like when you do vim Documents/index.html and you issue the command :sh and you do ls, it shows you the folder with Documents in it, not index.html
Hi puk -- your load.php is issuing a "Location" header to the client browser -- the client browser is supposed to send in the request in that header -- so in theory there should be no difference between you typing the URL in directly in your browser (example.com/test/test.html" or if you invoke example.com/load.php?page=test/test.html)
But obviously there MUST be some difference -- that's why I am asking you to look at the Apache access logs -- I did LAMP and WAMP development and administration for 8 years (including lots and lots of mod_rewrite and reverse proxying) and I have NEVER EVER even considered changing the working directory in a PHP script - shouldn't be at all necessary if the correct URLS are being requested -- have a good evening!
@MurrayMcDonald yes that also occurred to me that the Location header should act as a redirect, so it still should work on files with permission 0700. I too think I am doing something wrong. My initial idea was to use file_get_contents($fileName). Do you think that is better?
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