Question

I’m running a LAMP stack on Amazon EC2 for an AJAX focussed application written in PHP with APC caching. I’m sorry if this is the wrong forum but I don’t really know if the problem is my server or my code.

One particular ajax call (which always has unique parameters) in my app returns some html with an iframe in it with myphpfile.php as the src (to force evaluation of myphpfile.php – there are better ways to do it sure, but I couldn’t find them years ago when I wrote the code!). Yesterday I changed the src variable to myhtmlfile.html and yet there are still clients out there requesting the old myphpfile.php despite there being no reference to it anywhere on my server.

I have cleared the APC cache (by doing an apache2 restart). The vast majority of users are going to the new file, but still 1 or 2 per minute or so are going to the old file (that’s not much % of my traffic, but I like to take care of my traffic!). The ones still using the old file tend to be iphone users.

I just have no idea where it could be getting any reference to the old myphpfile.php – it isn’t in the php file, not in the apc cache. What else do I have to clear?

Answer 1

Yesterday I changed the src variable to myhtmlfile.html and yet there
are still clients out there requesting the old myphpfile.php

I have requests for files that have been gone for years. Sometimes there’s just no stopping them.

but I like to take care of my traffic!). The ones still using the old
file tend to be iphone users.

If you haven’t done so already, you can have Apache send the html file to users so you don’t have to worry about them receiving 404’s. Simply use .htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^myphpfile\.php myhtmlfile.html [L]
</IfModule>