Check a website status

[themistral]

Hi guys,

 

I run a few niche directory websites and I wanted to make sure they never get outdated.

With that in mind, I was thinking of running a check once a month to make sure all websites in the database return a 200 status.

If not they get flagged for me to look at.

Hopefully this means I won't have a directory of outdated links!

 

Firstly, is there any ethical reason not to check the status of someone else's website? It will only be once a month, so should not impact on server load for the sites I have listed.

 

Secondly, I have no idea how to do this! The only way I've found is to look for an image on the target website.

Well, I don't make people link back to me, and in fact, quite often site owners are unaware they are listed as anyone can suggest a relevant website be listed.

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

Thanks! 

 

[ignace]

You'll need cURL to read out HEAD response headers check for HTTP/1.x 200 OK

 

http://icfun.blogspot.com/2008/07/php-get-server-response-header-by.html

[themistral]

Thanks ignace!

 

I will check it out!

[teamatomic]

$url='http://www.google.com';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
preg_match('*HTTP\/1\.1\s([0-9]{3})*is', $result, $status);
echo "$status[1]";

[JonnoTheDev]

You can do this without cURL.

<?php
function httpHeader($server) {
$fp = @fsockopen($server,80,$errno,$errstr,30);
$out  = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n"; 
$out .= "Host: $server\r\n"; 
$out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
@fwrite($fp,$out);
$content = @fgets($fp);
if(strstr($content, "200") || strstr($content, "302")) {
	return true;
}
return false;
}


if(httpHeader("www.google.com")) {
print "url ok";
}
else {
print "bad url";
}	
?>

[themistral]

Thanks teamatomic - it works great!

 

neil.johnson - I don't know a lot about CURL, so is there any reason to prefer your way over CURL?

 

Thanks for the responses - much appreciated!

[Ken2k7]

themistral, for a simple check, fsockopen is more ideal because it is simpler and less complex than cURL. It's also less intensive. But if you need to do more complex stuff, cURL would be the way to go.

[ignace]

neil.johnson - I don't know a lot about CURL, so is there any reason to prefer your way over CURL?

 

In theory they are the same except that neil's solution will work when cURL is not enabled.

 

@neil I chose the wrong words it should have been "You can use" instead of "You'll need"

[themistral]

Thanks for the help guys!