What is the difference between HTTP_HOST and SERVER_NAME in PHP?

Question

What is the difference between HTTP_HOST and SERVER_NAME in PHP?

where:

• HTTP_HOST === $_SERVER[\'HTTP_HOST\'

Answer 1

As balusC said SERVER_NAME is not reliable and can be changed in apache config , server name config of server and firewall that can be between you and server.

Following function always return real host (user typed host) without port and it's almost reliable:

function getRealHost(){
   list($realHost,)=explode(':',$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
   return $realHost;
}