Validating a URL

[martyn]

I need to make sure that URLs stored in the DATABASE are legit, as it looks bad for a site to have un-reliable links.

Can this be done through PHP?

Say the url is in $url how can i see if that page exists?

Thanks,
Martyn Pittuck

[Radon3k]

I'm not sure, but maybe something like this?

$sql = SELECT urlfield FROM table_name;

if($url != $sql) {
echo("No URL found.");
} else {
header("Location:/something/file.php");
}

I'm not sure if you are checking it if someone enters it in a text field or not, and I'm probably wrong. But that might work.

[martyn]

No.

Sorry i was not clear.

I can get everything from the database. I need to see if the URL exists (i.e. if $url = "www.bbc.co.uk" it will return true if $url = "www.a_non_existing_site.com" then it will return false.

[diego25]

Use fopen() to attempt to connect. If it returns false, then the page doesn't exist. Otherwise, the page exists.

Diego