Detecting Dead Links

[Paul Schmidinger]

Hi,

I have a number of Links (coming from a database, but that does not matter)
and I want to check using a PHP-script if they "work" or if they are "dead"
(error 404 or something like that).

Now, what happens if I use fopen() to test a dead link? Do I get an error
(that would be good) or do I get the Error404-HTML-Page from the webserver
and can not determine if it is a "valid" page or just the Error-Page?

Does anyone have an idea how to test for dead links using PHP?

Thanks,
Paul
[url]www.eigelb.at[/url]

[Alvaro G Vicario]

*** Paul Schmidinger wrote/escribió (Fri, 25 Jun 2004 12:58:43 +0200):

> Now, what happens if I use fopen() to test a dead link? Do I get an error
> (that would be good) or do I get the Error404-HTML-Page from the webserver
> and can not determine if it is a "valid" page or just the Error-Page?

You have to check the headers returned by the server, not the page itself.
They look like this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 11:00:24 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
Content-Length: 750
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-Control: private
Age: 2

Please note the numeric code in the first line (in this example, 200),
that's the useful info. Please note it can be a redirect code--that's what
you send to client when you use header('Location: http//.....') in your
scripts.

As about the best way to check the HTTP status code, I don't have any
experience. However, I believe the chapter "CURL, Client URL Library
Functions" in PHP docs can be what you need.


--
--
-- Álvaro G. Vicario - Burgos, Spain
--

[Paul Schmidinger]

Thanks a lot, that should do it!

Paul Schmidinger
[url]www.eigelb.at[/url]

"Alvaro G Vicario" <alvaro_QUITAR_REMOVE@telecomputeronline.com> schrieb im
Newsbeitrag news:shhqbr09g9zx.143by67nrce7p$.dlg@40tude.net...

> *** Paul Schmidinger wrote/escribió (Fri, 25 Jun 2004 12:58:43 +0200):

> > Now, what happens if I use fopen() to test a dead link? Do I get an

error

> > (that would be good) or do I get the Error404-HTML-Page from the

webserver

> > and can not determine if it is a "valid" page or just the Error-Page?

>
> You have to check the headers returned by the server, not the page itself.
> They look like this:
>
> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 11:00:24 GMT
> Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
> X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
> MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
> Content-Length: 750
> Content-Type: text/html
> Cache-Control: private
> Age: 2
>
> Please note the numeric code in the first line (in this example, 200),
> that's the useful info. Please note it can be a redirect code--that's what
> you send to client when you use header('Location: http//.....') in your
> scripts.
>
> As about the best way to check the HTTP status code, I don't have any
> experience. However, I believe the chapter "CURL, Client URL Library
> Functions" in PHP docs can be what you need.
>
>
> --
> --
> -- Álvaro G. Vicario - Burgos, Spain
> --