[PHP] – Check if a URL is valid/exists

Hello folks.

The following is a PHP function that will check a given URL to see if it’s valid, and check to see if it is responding (ie: returning Status: 200 OK).

First, the function

function is_valid_url($url)
{
	if (!($url = @parse_url($url)))
	{
		return false;
	}

	$url['port'] = (!isset($url['port'])) ? 80 : (int)$url['port'];
	$url['path'] = (!empty($url['path'])) ? $url['path'] : '/';
	$url['path'] .= (isset($url['query'])) ? "?$url[query]" : '';

	if (isset($url['host']) AND $url['host'] != @gethostbyname($url['host']))
	{
		if (PHP_VERSION >= 5)
		{
			$headers = @implode('', @get_headers("$url[scheme]://$url[host]:$url[port]$url[path]"));
		}
		else
		{
			if (!($fp = @fsockopen($url['host'], $url['port'], $errno, $errstr, 10)))
			{
				return false;
			}
			fputs($fp, "HEAD $url[path] HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: $url[host]\r\n\r\n");
			$headers = fread($fp, 4096);
			fclose($fp);
		}
		return (bool)preg_match('#^HTTP/.*\s+[(200|301|302)]+\s#i', $headers);
	}
	return false;
}

How to use it? It’s simple.

if (is_valid_url('http://google.com'))
{
	echo 'sweetness!';
}
else
{
	echo 'awww damn';
}

Enjoy