Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Programming Discussion : PHP : howto find remote file header ?

[goolex]

Hi

i wana know how can i know remote file size without downloading that file
is this possible ? how ?

thanks

[thomas7]

HTTP Headers normally tell you the size of the file.
Grab the HTTP headers.
You can use some sort of socket to just get the headers on the file.

[goolex]

Originally Posted by thomas7

HTTP Headers normally tell you the size of the file.
Grab the HTTP headers.
You can use some sort of socket to just get the headers on the file.

yes but i dont know how can i use php to grab file header

[thomas7]

Sorry, didn't realise you already knew that.
I don't write PHP, i'm a perl person.
There is a dedicated module in perl, so theres probabally one for php.
Here's a simple method.

$server = fsockopen($host, $port);
fputs($server, $frombrowser);
$topheaders=fgets($server, 1024);

This will return the first 1K of data. That should contain a header.
I think $frombrowser should be the file you are requesting maybe?? GET /file.html HTTP/1.1

This is just out of some code that i've got lying around. Not my code mind

[thomas7]

Found out that for the $frombrowser you also need to give it a
Host: www.test.com
Then just split $topheaders down into the part you need.
Content-Length: X is what your after.

[Korvan]

what thomas7 has stated will work in php.

Check this page for another good example of an http request using fsockopen
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.fsockopen.php