How can I check if a URL exists via PHP?

Question

How do I check if a URL exists (not 404) in PHP?

Answer 1

$url = 'http://google.com';
$not_url = 'stp://google.com';

if (@file_get_contents($url)): echo "Found '$url'!";
else: echo "Can't find '$url'.";
endif;
if (@file_get_contents($not_url)): echo "Found '$not_url!";
else: echo "Can't find '$not_url'.";
endif;

// Found 'http://google.com'!Can't find 'stp://google.com'.

Answer 2

Here is a solution that reads only the first byte of source code... returning false if the file_get_contents fails... This will also work for remote files like images.

 function urlExists($url)
{
    if (@file_get_contents($url,false,NULL,0,1))
    {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

Answer 3

Other way to check if a URL is valid or not can be:

<?php

  if (isValidURL("http://www.gimepix.com")) {
      echo "URL is valid...";
  } else {
      echo "URL is not valid...";
  }

  function isValidURL($url) {
      $file_headers = @get_headers($url);
      if (strpos($file_headers[0], "200 OK") > 0) {
         return true;
      } else {
        return false;
      }
  }
?>

Answer 4

cURL can return HTTP code I don’t think all that extra code is necessary?

function urlExists($url=NULL)
    {
        if($url == NULL) return false;
        $ch = curl_init($url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        $data = curl_exec($ch);
        $httpcode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
        curl_close($ch); 
        if($httpcode>=200 && $httpcode<300){
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }

Answer 5

you cannot use curl in certain servers u can use this code

<?php
$url = 'http://www.example.com';
$array = get_headers($url);
$string = $array[0];
if(strpos($string,"200"))
  {
    echo 'url exists';
  }
  else
  {
    echo 'url does not exist';
  }
?>

Answer 6

pretty fast:

function http_response($url){
    $resURL = curl_init(); 
    curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_URL, $url); 
    curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, 1); 
    curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION, 'curlHeaderCallback'); 
    curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1); 
    curl_exec ($resURL); 
    $intReturnCode = curl_getinfo($resURL, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE); 
    curl_close ($resURL); 
    if ($intReturnCode != 200 && $intReturnCode != 302 && $intReturnCode != 304) { return 0; } else return 1;
}

echo 'google:';
echo http_response('http://www.google.com');
echo '/ ogogle:';
echo http_response('http://www.ogogle.com');