How to PHP server-side check if a url of a web site is valid?

Question

I\'ve searched our SO questions but found solutions are based on calling ping command executed from using system PHP function.

My web host

Answer 1

If by a valid URL you mean one which does not 404, then you could use get_headers() and look for 404 in the first returned array element.

$url = 'http://google.com';
list($status) = get_headers($url);
if (strpos($status, '404') !== FALSE) {
   // URL is 404ing
}

Alternatively, you could look for 200 which would be a normal happy request :)

Answer 2

try this:

//checking if the site exists by fopen, instead of file_get_contents to speed it up

$url = "URL"; //your url goes in this place instead of nabtron.com

if (@fopen($url,"r")) {
echo "<b>".$url."</b> is accessible<br />";
}