Supported Protocols and Wrappers
PHP Manual

http://

https://

Accessing HTTP(s) URLs

Description

Allows read-only access to files/resources via HTTP. By default, a HTTP 1.0 GET is used. A Host: header is sent with the request to handle name-based virtual hosts. If you have configured a user_agent string using your php.ini file or the stream context, it will also be included in the request.

The stream allows access to the body of the resource; the headers are stored in the $http_response_header variable.

If it's important to know the URL of the resource where your document came from (after all redirects have been processed), you'll need to process the series of response headers returned by the stream.

The from directive will be used for the From: header if set and not overwritten by the Context options and parameters.

Usage

  • http://example.com
  • http://example.com/file.php?var1=val1&var2=val2
  • http://user:password@example.com
  • https://example.com
  • https://example.com/file.php?var1=val1&var2=val2
  • https://user:password@example.com

Options

Wrapper Summary
Attribute Supported
Restricted by allow_url_fopen Yes
Allows Reading Yes
Allows Writing No
Allows Appending No
Allows Simultaneous Reading and Writing N/A
Supports stat No
Supports unlink No
Supports rename No
Supports mkdir No
Supports rmdir No

Examples

Example #1 Detecting which URL we ended up on after redirects

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

$fp = fopen($url, 'r');

$meta_data = stream_get_meta_data($fp);
foreach ($meta_data['wrapper_data'] as $response) {

    /* Were we redirected? */
    if (strtolower(substr($response, 0, 10)) == 'location: ') {

        /* update $url with where we were redirected to */
        $url = substr($response, 10);
    }

}

?>

Notes

Note: HTTPS is only supported when the openssl extension is enabled.

HTTP connections are read-only; writing data or copying files to an HTTP resource is not supported.

Sending POST and PUT requests, for example, can be done with the help of HTTP Contexts.

See Also