Images on other servers?

deep

Hello,

I need to check if an image on another server is responding (is able to be shown/ if it exists). For this i can not use file_exists() because its not on my server... and if i use file() the page will start loading very very slow, because its waiting for the images from the other server...

Anyone know a better way to do it?

Thanks!

mattm591

I'm afraid I don't know a solution, but I would have thought you would have the same problem with this as you do when fiding if a webserver is online or offline due to the bug in php making it not tell you if the servers offline properly. I remember when trying to find a solution to that problem I read about a mod of php or an addon to it that had sorted out this bug. If anyone know what that is it may be able to help you.

bradgrafelman

Assuming it doesn't take too long to connect to the server and send an HTTP HEAD command, you could fake a GET request and see if it returns a 404 error:

<?PHP
$host = 'www.example.com';
$path = '/images/';
$img = 'myimage.jpg';

$fp = fsockopen($host, 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
if (!$fp) {
   echo "$errstr ($errno)<br />\n";
} else {
   $out = "HEAD ".$path.$img." HTTP/1.1\r\n";
   $out .= "Host: $host\r\n";
   $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";

   fwrite($fp, $out);
  $status = fgets($fp);
   fclose($fp);

  if(ereg('HTTP/1\.[01] 404', $status)) {

    echo 'remote image does not exist.';

  } else {

    echo 'remote image exists.';

  }
}
?>

mtmosier

Using the code above, it's a little more proper to replace GET with HEAD. Does the same thing but the server only sends the headers. (Doesn't matter much if you're going to abort the request early, but still.)

bradgrafelman

Thanks, mtmosier. I never thought of using HEAD. I've edited the code as such.

z3n

I have a similar problem.

I was using @fopen on my main server to determine if an image on my remote image server is a JPG or GIF. But recently, my image server has been slowing wayyy down during peak periods, and thus, the scripts on my main server use fopen to determine which image to display, they lag the entire server!!!

Do you think bradgrafelman's fsockopen will perform better?

mtmosier

Yes.

z3n

$fp = fsockopen($host, 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);

Is that 30 in seconds?

mtmosier

Yes it is.