I'm developing a website using GET super global to catch category name and display related posts mysite.com/cat?name=sports, but when I pass wrong or a parameters that doesn't exist mysite.com/cat?name=fsdf it shows me a category page with the parameter name but without any related posts, I want it to display 404 error page, I tried to check if the category name exists and if not it will be redirected to error page but I don't want that - I don't want to change what URL shows in the address bar when the error page is shown.
the page that I want to display error has variable name like this mysite.com/cat?name=xx if xx is not a recognized category I want to display 404 error in the same url no redirect
You can use the appropriate header 404 in case a category does not exist. Try this one:
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
Make sure your server knows how to handle 404 responses.