fopen to an unstable server

Anon

can someone help me?

I want to find out whether it's possible to determine if a server is available to open a connection to.

e.g. something like this

if ($fp = fopen($url,'r'))
{
while (!feof ($fp)) {
$Document .= fgets($fp, 4096);
}
}
else
{
print( "Error: could not connect to server." );
}

the problem is, if the $url is not active, the script will output errors at the fopen before going to print a nice error message.

what's the best way to fail gracefully in this case?

thanks

marcel

if ($fp = @fopen($url,'r'))
//.... rest of code

Anon

thanks

but what does @ do?

Anon

Suppresses error messages generated by the function it's attached to.

With it in place, the failure to connect will be silent; the only indication that something went wrong will be the fact that $fp contains "false" instead of a file resource.