file exists on remote box

lth2h

In my script, I'm checking to see if a file exists and if it does I display a link to the file. Now this works all well and good until I have a file on another box. The file_exists function doesn't work with URLs like http://10.33.1.1/IVR/123.wav

What I'm doing now is

if (@fopen($url, "r")) {

  # more code here

}

I'm wondering if there is a better way that doesn't use the @ to suppress the error message when a file doesn't exist? Really even if it isn't "better" but doesn't use the @ to suppress the error messages, I'd rather use it as our coding standards strongly oppose the use of @ in PHP.

Thanks

bradgrafelman

What's wrong with using @ in a sitution like this?

lth2h

Code should run without any error or warning messages being generated. Using "@" doesn't get rid of the warning, it merely suppresses the output of the error. The code is technically broken until it will work without error/warning suppression.

Installer

The @ shouldn't be necessary in any case in your production code, as you would have the error messages written to a log file rather than displayed onscreen. As for the fopen() not succeeding, why not use an else clause to do/display something graceful? And the PHP Error Handling and Logging Functions offer quite a few options.