[Resolved] Detecting if an image exists at a specific URL

[wheeler08]

I have found posts on here that answer this question, however, I am looking for a more efficient way of doing it.

The best way so far was the use of "getimagesize()", which detects the attributes of an image and returns it. If no image exists, then it returns false. "fopen()" doesn't work with URLs (at least I can't seem to get it to work) and "file_exists()" doesn't seem to work with a URL either.

The problem with getimagesize() is that with multiple detections, it takes several seconds to find each picture, get the attributes and return them back to the browser. I need a way of simply detecting if the image is there and that's it.

I am not saying fopen() or file_exists() doesn't work, I was just unable to get it to return a value.

Thanks!

[dalecosp]

[man]fopen/man or [man]file_exists/man working would probably be dependent on server configuration (the "Fopen Wrappers" section of the server's php.ini file). Although this parameter is set to "on" in a default installation, many shared hosts or hosting services disable this function. The output of [man]phpinfo/man should tell you it it's on or off.

As for [man]fopen/man, is this basically what you're trying?

<?php

$foo=fopen("http://www.google.com/images/logo_sm.gif", 'r');

if ($foo) {
  echo "yup";
}
echo "\n";
?>

If fopen wrappers are off, there aren't many good ways to test for the file in advance. You have found one; another might be an attempt to open a socket and connect, send a GET yourself, etc. However, if fopen wrappers are off, they probably aren't gonna let you create a socket, either ....

[wheeler08]

I have never used fopen before and it appears I was using it incorrectly.

Thank you for your help!