Check for existing files? Keyword: 404

[pckidcomplainer]

How can I check if a file on a different server is existing. I will have a page with different download-links. And before I parse this page I want to check if all the files are available, so that I can get rid of the broken links. This means: I want to check if the link gives an Error 404 back. Is that possible??? I really have no clue for this problem.

Thanks and take care...

[[deleted]]

Read the HTTP RFC.
You can connect to the remote server using sockets, send an HTTP request (pretending you're a browser) and get the HTTP header.
The header will contain the return-codes like 404, 500 and 200.

[Anon]

$host = "localhost";
$url = "/apache_pb.gif";

$fp = fsockopen($host, 80);
socket_set_blocking($fp, TRUE);
fwrite($fp, "HEAD $url HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: $host\r\n\r\n");
for($result = ""; !feof($fp); $result .= fread($fp, 10000000));
fclose($fp);

echo stristr($result, "404 Not Found") ? "Doesn't exist" : "Exists";

[[deleted]]

That's exaclty what I had in mind, except I'd remove the FOR loop, because the status is allways on the first line of the headers. You can just read one line and drop the connection.