What causes an HTTP 405 “invalid method (HTTP verb

Question

I have one form in a PHP (5.2.9-1) application that causes IIS (Microsoft-IIS/6.0) to throw the following error when POSTed:

The page you are looking for cannot be displayed because an invalid method (HTTP verb) was used to attempt access.

It's an HTTP 405 status code. All other forms in the application work, so I believe that the IIS 'verbs' setting for PHP pages is correct.

This is a customer's server, which I have no access to for verifying settings or testing code. All I can do is send the customer replacement files. Other customers on IIS servers have no such issue.

The form is perfectly straightforward:

<form method="post" action="index.php">
    ... fields ... 
</form>

What can cause IIS to throw that error on one form only, but work fine on others?

Answer 1

I had this issue with a facebook application that I was developing for a fan page tab. If anyone faces this issue with a facebook application then

1-goto https://developers.facebook.com

2-select the application that you are developing

3-make sure that all the link to your application has tailing slash /

my issue was in the https://developers.facebook.com->Apps->MYAPPNAME->settings->Page Tab->Secure Page Tab URL, Page Tab Edit URL, Page Tab URL hope this will help

Answer 2

By any chance have you tried POST vs post? This support article suggests it can cause problems with IIS: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=828726

Answer 3

I managed to get FTP access to the customer's server and so was able to track down the problem.

After the form is POSTed, I authenticate the user and then redirect to the main part of the app.

Util::redirect('/apps/content');

The error was occurring not on the posting of the form, but on the redirect immediately following it. For some reason, IIS was continuing to presume the POST method for the redirect, and then objecting to the POST to /apps/content as it's a directory.

The error message never indicated that it was the following page that was generating the error - thanks Microsoft!

The solution was to add a trailing slash:

Util::redirect('/apps/content/');

IIS could then resolve the redirect to a default document as is no longer attempting to POST to a directory.

Answer 4

It sounds like the server is having trouble handling POST requests (get and post are verbs). I don't know, how or why someone would configure a server to ignore post requests, but the only solution would be to fix the server, or change your app to use get requests.

Answer 5

As drewm himself said this is due to the subsequent redirect after the POST to the script has in fact succeeded. (I might have added this as a comment to his answer but you need 50 reputation to comment and I'm new round here - daft rule IMHO)

BUT it also applies if you're trying to redirect to a page, not just a directory - at least it did for me. I was trying to redirect to /thankyou.html. What fixes this is using an absolute URL, i.e. http://example.com/thankyou.html

Answer 6

i had to change my form's POST to a GET. i was just doing a demo post to an html page, on a test azure site. read this for info: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942051