http/https anomoly

weird things afoot.

i'd been prototyping a site and had a couple of reports that output in pdf
format. everything has been working fine so far. i added in some ssl last
night so that pages/scripts that set an $enableSecurity flag dynamically
change from http to https (avoids mixed security messages for things like
resource links, etc.). now, everything continues to work fine with the
exception of the pdf reports. there are no errors reported but no report
data is displayed.

to do further testing, i commented out the header()s call to set the content
type, disposition, etc. so that the raw pdf content would display in the
browser as text...just to make sure i was still getting output at all. turns
out, i'm still getting the content. i can also copy it from the browser,
save it to disk, and open it from there and see the report data just fine.

that leads me here. if you've run across this before or have an idea about
what the cause is...or, how i should approach further troubleshooting, i'd
really appreciate your input.

tia,

me

Re: http/https anomoly

On Jan 7, 6:01 pm, "Steve" wrote:
> weird things afoot.

> to do further testing, i commented out the header()s call to set the content
> type, disposition, etc. so that the raw pdf content would display in the
> browser as text...just to make sure i was still getting output at all. turns
> out, i'm still getting the content. i can also copy it from the browser,
> save it to disk, and open it from there and see the report data just fine.
>

which confirms that this is a browser issue (I'll bet you're using
MSIE) not a PHP problem.

This might be of help:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;8129 35

C.

Re: http/https anomoly

> ... i added in some ssl last
> night so that pages/scripts that set an $enableSecurity flag dynamically
> change from http to https (avoids mixed security messages for things like
> resource links, etc.). now, everything continues to work fine with the
> exception of the pdf reports. there are no errors reported but no report
> data is displayed.

Let me guess: you are using Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has a
serious bug that causes it not to store anything if a no-cache header is
sent, not even if it calls another program to display the contents. So
it calls acrobat with data that IE refuses to pass. So acrobat starts
with data that is not there.

Let me do another guess: you are sending "do-cache" headers because IE
needs them to overcome the above problem, and you are using sessions.

In this case, you need to know that a session_start() call also sends
no-cache headers. This is poorly (if at all) documented and took me a
few months to find out as well.

So if you send headers like "Pragma-cache", send them *after* you use
the session_start() function.

Hope this helps,
--
Willem Bogaerts

Application smith
Kratz B.V.
http://www.kratz.nl/

Re: http/https anomoly

On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:32:15 +0100, Willem Bogaerts
wrote:

>> ... i added in some ssl last
>> night so that pages/scripts that set an $enableSecurity flag dynamically
>> change from http to https (avoids mixed security messages for things
>> like
>> resource links, etc.). now, everything continues to work fine with the
>> exception of the pdf reports. there are no errors reported but no report
>> data is displayed.
>
> Let me guess: you are using Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has a
> serious bug that causes it not to store anything if a no-cache header is
> sent, not even if it calls another program to display the contents. So
> it calls acrobat with data that IE refuses to pass. So acrobat starts
> with data that is not there.
>
> Let me do another guess: you are sending "do-cache" headers because IE
> needs them to overcome the above problem, and you are using sessions.
>
> In this case, you need to know that a session_start() call also sends
> no-cache headers. This is poorly (if at all) documented and took me a
> few months to find out as well.
>
> So if you send headers like "Pragma-cache", send them *after* you use
> the session_start() function.

Ah, possibly valuable information for the future. Duly noted & stored.
--
Rik Wasmus

Re: http/https anomoly

"Willem Bogaerts" wrote in
message news:4784868e$0$85780$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>> ... i added in some ssl last
>> night so that pages/scripts that set an $enableSecurity flag dynamically
>> change from http to https (avoids mixed security messages for things like
>> resource links, etc.). now, everything continues to work fine with the
>> exception of the pdf reports. there are no errors reported but no report
>> data is displayed.
>
> Let me guess: you are using Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has a
> serious bug that causes it not to store anything if a no-cache header is
> sent, not even if it calls another program to display the contents. So
> it calls acrobat with data that IE refuses to pass. So acrobat starts
> with data that is not there.
>
> Let me do another guess: you are sending "do-cache" headers because IE
> needs them to overcome the above problem, and you are using sessions.
>
> In this case, you need to know that a session_start() call also sends
> no-cache headers. This is poorly (if at all) documented and took me a
> few months to find out as well.
>
> So if you send headers like "Pragma-cache", send them *after* you use
> the session_start() function.
>
> Hope this helps,

only tremendously! i'd read the article posted before and did as the fix
suggested without any luck!

yes, it is a company website and the company dictates IE (just what i have
to work with). and yes, the reports and rest of the site are secured and
some of that info is sessioned.

i'll let you know if it is solved, although if it works i'm not sure how to
pass the kudos along to you...other than saying thanks. :)

Re: http/https anomoly

"Willem Bogaerts" wrote in
message news:4784868e$0$85780$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>> ... i added in some ssl last
>> night so that pages/scripts that set an $enableSecurity flag dynamically
>> change from http to https (avoids mixed security messages for things like
>> resource links, etc.). now, everything continues to work fine with the
>> exception of the pdf reports. there are no errors reported but no report
>> data is displayed.
>
> Let me guess: you are using Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has a
> serious bug that causes it not to store anything if a no-cache header is
> sent, not even if it calls another program to display the contents. So
> it calls acrobat with data that IE refuses to pass. So acrobat starts
> with data that is not there.
>
> Let me do another guess: you are sending "do-cache" headers because IE
> needs them to overcome the above problem, and you are using sessions.
>
> In this case, you need to know that a session_start() call also sends
> no-cache headers. This is poorly (if at all) documented and took me a
> few months to find out as well.
>
> So if you send headers like "Pragma-cache", send them *after* you use
> the session_start() function.

tried all of the above with no success. i'm testing using IE 7. acrobat
reader comes up in the browser as it should, and always has, it's just that
there is still no content, errors, or anything else...just blank.

any other thoughts?