PHP: How to send HTTP response code?

Question

I have a PHP script that needs to make responses with HTTP response codes (status-codes), like HTTP 200 OK, or some 4XX or 5XX code.

How can I do this in PHP?

Answer 1

If you are here because of Wordpress giving 404's when loading the environment, this should fix the problem:

define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('../wp-blog-header.php');
status_header( 200 );
//$wp_query->is_404=false; // if necessary

The problem is due to it sending a Status: 404 Not Found header. You have to override that. This will also work:

define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('../wp-blog-header.php');
header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");
header("Status: 200 All rosy");

Answer 2

With the header function. There is an example in the section on the first parameter it takes.

Answer 3

I just found this question and thought it needs a more comprehensive answer:

As of PHP 5.4 there are three methods to accomplish this:

Assembling the response code on your own (PHP >= 4.0)

The header() function has a special use-case that detects a HTTP response line and lets you replace that with a custom one

header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");

However, this requires special treatment for (Fast)CGI PHP:

$sapi_type = php_sapi_name();
if (substr($sapi_type, 0, 3) == 'cgi')
    header("Status: 404 Not Found");
else
    header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found");

Note: According to the HTTP RFC, the reason phrase can be any custom string (that conforms to the standard), but for the sake of client compatibility I do not recommend putting a random string there.

Note: php_sapi_name() requires PHP 4.0.1

3rd argument to header function (PHP >= 4.3)

There are obviously a few problems when using that first variant. The biggest of which I think is that it is partly parsed by PHP or the web server and poorly documented.

Since 4.3, the header function has a 3rd argument that lets you set the response code somewhat comfortably, but using it requires the first argument to be a non-empty string. Here are two options:

header(':', true, 404);
header('X-PHP-Response-Code: 404', true, 404);

I recommend the 2nd one. The first does work on all browsers I have tested, but some minor browsers or web crawlers may have a problem with a header line that only contains a colon. The header field name in the 2nd. variant is of course not standardized in any way and could be modified, I just chose a hopefully descriptive name.

http_response_code function (PHP >= 5.4)

The http_response_code() function was introduced in PHP 5.4, and it made things a lot easier.

http_response_code(404);

That's all.

Compatibility

Here is a function that I have cooked up when I needed compatibility below 5.4 but wanted the functionality of the "new" http_response_code function. I believe PHP 4.3 is more than enough backwards compatibility, but you never know...

// For 4.3.0 <= PHP <= 5.4.0
if (!function_exists('http_response_code'))
{
    function http_response_code($newcode = NULL)
    {
        static $code = 200;
        if($newcode !== NULL)
        {
            header('X-PHP-Response-Code: '.$newcode, true, $newcode);
            if(!headers_sent())
                $code = $newcode;
        }       
        return $code;
    }
}

Answer 4

If your version of PHP does not include this function:

<?php

function http_response_code($code = NULL) {
        if ($code !== NULL) {
            switch ($code) {
                case 100: $text = 'Continue';
                    break;
                case 101: $text = 'Switching Protocols';
                    break;
                case 200: $text = 'OK';
                    break;
                case 201: $text = 'Created';
                    break;
                case 202: $text = 'Accepted';
                    break;
                case 203: $text = 'Non-Authoritative Information';
                    break;
                case 204: $text = 'No Content';
                    break;
                case 205: $text = 'Reset Content';
                    break;
                case 206: $text = 'Partial Content';
                    break;
                case 300: $text = 'Multiple Choices';
                    break;
                case 301: $text = 'Moved Permanently';
                    break;
                case 302: $text = 'Moved Temporarily';
                    break;
                case 303: $text = 'See Other';
                    break;
                case 304: $text = 'Not Modified';
                    break;
                case 305: $text = 'Use Proxy';
                    break;
                case 400: $text = 'Bad Request';
                    break;
                case 401: $text = 'Unauthorized';
                    break;
                case 402: $text = 'Payment Required';
                    break;
                case 403: $text = 'Forbidden';
                    break;
                case 404: $text = 'Not Found';
                    break;
                case 405: $text = 'Method Not Allowed';
                    break;
                case 406: $text = 'Not Acceptable';
                    break;
                case 407: $text = 'Proxy Authentication Required';
                    break;
                case 408: $text = 'Request Time-out';
                    break;
                case 409: $text = 'Conflict';
                    break;
                case 410: $text = 'Gone';
                    break;
                case 411: $text = 'Length Required';
                    break;
                case 412: $text = 'Precondition Failed';
                    break;
                case 413: $text = 'Request Entity Too Large';
                    break;
                case 414: $text = 'Request-URI Too Large';
                    break;
                case 415: $text = 'Unsupported Media Type';
                    break;
                case 500: $text = 'Internal Server Error';
                    break;
                case 501: $text = 'Not Implemented';
                    break;
                case 502: $text = 'Bad Gateway';
                    break;
                case 503: $text = 'Service Unavailable';
                    break;
                case 504: $text = 'Gateway Time-out';
                    break;
                case 505: $text = 'HTTP Version not supported';
                    break;
                default:
                    exit('Unknown http status code "' . htmlentities($code) . '"');
                    break;
            }
            $protocol = (isset($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']) ? $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] : 'HTTP/1.0');
            header($protocol . ' ' . $code . ' ' . $text);
            $GLOBALS['http_response_code'] = $code;
        } else {
            $code = (isset($GLOBALS['http_response_code']) ? $GLOBALS['http_response_code'] : 200);
        }
        return $code;
    }

Answer 5

since PHP 5.4 you can use http_response_code() for get and set header status code.

here an example:

<?php

// Get the current response code and set a new one
var_dump(http_response_code(404));

// Get the new response code
var_dump(http_response_code());
?>

here is the document of this function in php.net:

http_response_code

Answer 6

header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");
http_response_code(201);
header("Status: 200 All rosy");

http_response_code(200); not work because test alert 404 https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/