$_SERVER vars compatibility

[DeepBlerg]

Hi,

I have noticed in instances that the $_SERVER element "HTTP_REFERER" is sometimes not available (I think) on Windows 98 machines. And I know it isn't present when you load a page first; I'm talking about when people are navigating through the site clikcing links to new pages, so it should be available as I can see it is present in the $_SERVER vars that I output on my Win XP machine.

Does anyone know of issues that can affect the $_SERVER vars depending on OS version / browser version?

Thanks in advance.

 

[sleipnir214]

Your brand of web server will have more to do with the problem of missing $_SERVER elements than anything.

The PHP online manual states:

You may or may not find any of the following elements in $_SERVER. Note that few, if any, of these will be available (or indeed have any meaning) if running PHP on the command line.

Most of the things in $_SERVER are handed to PHP by the web server when a PHP web script is invoked. Some things will be there most of the time, as they are part of the CGI 1.1 specification. Others are web-server-specific -- for example, $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'], $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW'] and $_SERVER['AUTH_TYPE'] are only available when running PHP with Apache, and then only when running PHP as an Apache module.




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[ingresman]

Some firewalls strip out info headers like ip adresses, referer etc

 

[danomac]

Also, some clients give you the option to turn off the REFERER so it isn't passed along to your website.