3.5 Your Own 404 Handler
Description: Your Own 404 Handler
Keywords: modpython

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3.5 Your Own 404 Handler

In some cases, you may wish to return a 404 (`HTTP_NOT_FOUND`) or other non-200 result from your handler. There is a trick here. if you return `HTTP_NOT_FOUND` from your handler, Apache will handle rendering an error page. This can be problematic if you wish your handler to render it's own error page.

In this case, you need to set `req.status = apache.HTTP_NOT_FOUND`, render your page, and then `return(apache.OK)`:

       from mod_python import apache

       def handler(req):
          if req.filename[-17:] == 'apache-error.html':
             #  make Apache report an error and render the error page
             return(apache.HTTP_NOT_FOUND)
          if req.filename[-18:] == 'handler-error.html':
             #  use our own error page
             req.status = apache.HTTP_NOT_FOUND
             pagebuffer = 'Page not here.  Page left, not know where gone.'
          else:
             #  use the contents of a file
             pagebuffer = open(req.filename, 'r').read()

          #  fall through from the latter two above
          req.write(pagebuffer)
          return(apache.OK)