Get redirected URL from URL [duplicate]

Question

This question is an exact duplicate of:

• Firefox live http headers, curley braces after Cache-Control: no-cache 1 answer

The title is quite cryptic but essentially whats happening is I'm calling the Google Places Photo API with the following url

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/photo?key=123456789&photoreference=CnRvAAAAV_35nLjUhcQXkoVdwN2YGP58Z3trNMDCRXznXqR2_0FbxXv60ssT2JN0ryI_ZP9-371u3JycqlH5oxLy8-bo2IkbkAfWD7fjyiytcEtWmk76Cseyxj9OlDozspXy8Cu7NFphl4N1AXSnj6QadSy6fxIQvc6Kiai-6HxMphQ7WCmYpBoUwxVnwEHl5zo0EbuoWCObJYTmAuA&maxwidth=400&maxheight=400&sensor=false

(I've changed my API key)

When accessing this link via the browser it redirect to a different url:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-WjnhIv4ry4I/T6Wg4kRb4kI/AAAAAAAuqqc/t6yVdN-jcC0/s1600-w220-h151/City%2BRestaurant

I need a way to get that second URL using PHP. Using cURL gives me a 302 "document has been moved to here" message.

Anyone know how I can get that second url via PHP?

Answer 1

Make your request using curl with curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true); which will cause curl to follow the redirect.

Then, you can use curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL); which will give you the last effective URL that curl fetched.

Alternatively, you can set CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION to false, and set CURLOPT_HEADERS to true, and parse the redirect location out yourself using a simple regex.