How can one check to see if a remote file exists using PHP

Question

The best I could find  an if fclose fopen type thing  makes the page load really slowly    Basically what I m trying to do is the following  I have a list of websites  and I want to display their favicons next to them  However  if a site doesn t have one  I d like to replace it with another image rather than display a broken image

User · Answer

function remote file exists  url      return bool preg match   HTTP 1   d s 200 s OK     current get headers  url          ff    http   www emeditor com pub emed32 11 0 5 exe       if remote file exists  ff            echo  file exist              else          echo  file not exist

User · Answer

CoolGoose s solution is good but this is faster for large files  as it only tries to read 1 byte    if  false     file get contents  http   example com path to image  0 null 0 1          image    default image

User · Answer

This is not an answer to your original question  but a better way of doing what you re trying to do   Instead of actually trying to get the site s favicon directly  which is a royal pain given it could be  favicon png   favicon ico   favicon gif  or even  path to favicon png   use google    lt img src  http   www google com s2 favicons domain  domain   gt    Done

User · Answer

PHP s inbuilt functions may not work for checking URL if allow url fopen setting is set to off for security reasons  Curl is a better option as we would not need to change our code at later stage  Below is the code I used to verify a valid URL    url   str replace        20    url    ch   curl init  url   curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT SSL VERIFYPEER  false    curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT NOBODY  true   curl exec  ch    httpcode   curl getinfo  ch  CURLINFO HTTP CODE     curl close  ch   if  httpcode gt  200  amp  amp   httpcode lt 300    return true    else   return false       Kindly note the CURLOPT SSL VERIFYPEER option which also verify the URL s starting with HTTPS

User · Answer

You can instruct curl to use the HTTP HEAD method via CURLOPT NOBODY    More or less   ch   curl init  http   www example com favicon ico     curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT NOBODY  true   curl exec  ch    retcode   curl getinfo  ch  CURLINFO HTTP CODE       retcode  gt   400 - gt  not found   retcode   200  found  curl close  ch     Anyway  you only save the cost of the HTTP transfer  not the TCP connection establishment and closing  And being favicons small  you might not see much improvement   Caching the result locally seems a good idea if it turns out to be too slow  HEAD checks the time of the file  and returns it in the headers  You can do like browsers and get the CURLINFO FILETIME of the icon   In your cache you can store the URL      favicon  timestamp    You can then compare the timestamp and reload the favicon

User · Answer

if  false     file get contents  http   example com path to image           image    default image      Should work

User · Answer

You can use     url getimagesize    http   www flickr com photos 27505599 N07 2564389539        if  is array  url         default image         directoryFolder junal jpg

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There s an even more sophisticated alternative  You can do the checking all client-side using a JQuery trick       a href   http        filter function         return this hostname  amp  amp  this hostname     location hostname     each function         var link   jQuery this       var faviconURL         link attr  href   replace    http                    1     favicon ico       var faviconIMG   jQuery   lt img src  favicon png  alt      gt     appendTo   link       var extImg   new Image        extImg src   faviconURL      if  extImg complete        faviconIMG attr  src   faviconURL       else       extImg onload   function     faviconIMG attr  src   faviconURL            From http   snipplr com view 18782 add-a-favicon-near-external-links-with-jquery   the original blog is presently down

User · Answer

You can use the filesystem  use Symfony Component Filesystem Filesystem  use Symfony Component Filesystem Exception IOExceptionInterface   and check          fileSystem   new Filesystem            if   fileSystem- exists  path to file    true

User · Answer

As Pies say you can use cURL  You can get cURL to only give you the headers  and not the body  which might make it faster  A bad domain could always take a while because you will be waiting for the request to time-out  you could probably change the timeout length using cURL   Here is example    function remoteFileExists  url         curl   curl init  url          don t fetch the actual page  you only want to check the connection is ok     curl setopt  curl  CURLOPT NOBODY  true          do request      result   curl exec  curl         ret   false         if request did not fail     if   result     false              if request was ok  check response code          statusCode   curl getinfo  curl  CURLINFO HTTP CODE              if   statusCode    200                 ret   true                          curl close  curl        return  ret      exists   remoteFileExists  http   stackoverflow com favicon ico    if   exists        echo  file exists     else       echo  file does not exist

User · Answer

If you are dealing with images  use getimagesize  Unlike file exists  this built-in function supports remote files  It will return an array that contains the image information  width  height  type  etc   All you have to do is to check the first element in the array  the width   use print r to output the content of the array   imageArray   getimagesize  http   www example com image jpg    if  imageArray 0         echo  it s an image and here is the image s info lt br gt        print r  imageArray     else       echo  invalid image

User · Answer

Don t know if this one is any faster when the file does not exist remotely  is file    but you could give it a shot    favIcon    default FavIcon   if is file  remotePath         favIcon   file get contents  remotePath

User · Answer

You could use the following    file    http   mysite co za images favicon ico    file exists     fopen  file   r      true   false    Worked for me when trying to check if an image exists on the URL

User · Answer

If you re using the Symfony framework  there is also a much simpler way using the HttpClientInterface  private function remoteFileExists string  url  HttpClientInterface  client   bool        response    client- gt request           GET            url   e g  http   example com file txt             return  response- gt getStatusCode      200     The docs for the HttpClient are also very good and maybe worth looking into if you need a more specific approach  https   symfony com doc current http client html

User · Answer

all the answers here that use get headers   are doing a GET request   It s much faster cheaper to just do a HEAD request   To make sure that get headers   does a HEAD request instead of a GET you should add this   stream context set default      array           http    gt  array               method    gt   HEAD                       so to check if a file exists  your code would look something like this   stream context set default      array           http    gt  array               method    gt   HEAD                      headers   get headers  http   website com dir file jpg   1    file found   stristr  headers 0    200       file found will return either false or true  obviously

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This works for me to check if a remote file exist in PHP    url    https   cdn sstatic net Sites stackoverflow img favicon ico        header response   get headers  url  1        if   strpos   header response 0    404        false             echo  File does NOT exist             else           echo  File exists

User · Answer

A radical solution would be to display the favicons as background images in a div above your default icon  That way  all overhead would be placed on the client while still not displaying broken images  missing background images are ignored in all browsers AFAIK

User · Answer

A complete function of the most voted answer  function remote file exists  url         ch   curl init  url       curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT NOBODY  1       curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT FOLLOWLOCATION  1     handles 301 2 redirects     curl exec  ch        httpCode   curl getinfo  ch  CURLINFO HTTP CODE       curl close  ch       if   httpCode    200   return true       You can use it like this  if remote file exists  url           file exists  do something

User · Answer

You should issue HEAD requests  not GET one  because you don t need the URI contents at all  As Pies said above  you should check for status code  in 200-299 ranges  and you may optionally follow 3xx redirects    The answers question contain a lot of code examples which may be helpful  PHP   Curl  HEAD Request takes a long time on some sites

User · Answer

This can be done by obtaining the HTTP Status code  404   not found  which is possible with file get contentsDocs making use of context options  The following code takes redirects into account and will return the status code of the final destination  Demo     url    http   example com     code   FALSE    options  http     array       method    gt   HEAD        ignore errors    gt  1      body   file get contents  url  NULL  stream context create  options     foreach  http response header as  header      sscanf  header   HTTP   d   d  d    code    echo  Status code   code     If you don t want to follow redirects  you can do it similar  Demo     url    http   example com     code   FALSE    options  http     array       method    gt   HEAD        ignore errors    gt  1       max redirects    gt  0      body   file get contents  url  NULL  stream context create  options     sscanf  http response header 0    HTTP   d   d  d    code    echo  Status code   code     Some of the functions  options and variables in use are explained with more detail on a blog post I ve written  HEAD first with PHP Streams

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If the file is not hosted external you might translate the remote URL to an absolute Path on your webserver  That way you don t have to call CURL or file get contents  etc   function remoteFileExists  url          root   realpath   SERVER  DOCUMENT ROOT          urlParts   parse url   url         if    isset   urlParts  path               return false       if   is file   root    urlParts  path               return true      else         return false      remoteFileExists   https   www yourdomain com path to remote image png          Note  Your webserver must populate DOCUMENT ROOT to use this function

User · Answer

To check for the existence of images  exif imagetype should be preferred over getimagesize  as it is much faster   To suppress the E NOTICE  just prepend the error control operator       if   exif imagetype  filename          Image exist     As a bonus  with the returned value  IMAGETYPE XXX  from exif imagetype we could also get the mime-type or file-extension with image type to mime type   image type to extension

[php] How can one check to see if a remote file exists using PHP?

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