URL Functions
PHP Manual

get_headers

Fetches all the headers sent by the server in response to a HTTP request

Description

array get_headers ( string $url [, int $format = 0 ] )

get_headers returns an array with the headers sent by the server in response to a HTTP request.

Parameters

url

The target URL.

format

If the optional format parameter is set to non-zero, get_headers parses the response and sets the array's keys.

Return Values

Returns an indexed or associative array with the headers, or FALSE on failure.

Changelog

Version Description
5.1.3 This function now uses the default stream context, which can be set/changed with the stream_context_set_default function.

Examples

Example #1 get_headers example

<?php
$url = 'http://www.example.com';

print_r(get_headers($url));

print_r(get_headers($url, 1));
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Array
(
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    [1] => Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 12:28:13 GMT
    [2] => Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)  (Red-Hat/Linux)
    [3] => Last-Modified: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:11:55 GMT
    [4] => ETag: "3f80f-1b6-3e1cb03b"
    [5] => Accept-Ranges: bytes
    [6] => Content-Length: 438
    [7] => Connection: close
    [8] => Content-Type: text/html
)

Array
(
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    [Date] => Sat, 29 May 2004 12:28:14 GMT
    [Server] => Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)  (Red-Hat/Linux)
    [Last-Modified] => Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:11:55 GMT
    [ETag] => "3f80f-1b6-3e1cb03b"
    [Accept-Ranges] => bytes
    [Content-Length] => 438
    [Connection] => close
    [Content-Type] => text/html
)

Example #2 get_headers using HEAD example

<?php
// By default get_headers uses a GET request to fetch the headers. If you
// want to send a HEAD request instead, you can do so using a stream context:
stream_context_set_default(
    array(
        'http' => array(
            'method' => 'HEAD'
        )
    )
);
$headers = get_headers('http://example.com');
?>

See Also

  • apache_request_headers