How Can I Check if a URL Exists Using PHP?

Determining the Existence of URLs Using PHP

Verifying the existence of a URL is a crucial task in web development. PHP offers multiple methods to accomplish this.

Method 1: get_headers()

This method retrieves the headers of a URL. If the URL exists, the headers will be returned. Otherwise, a false value will be assigned to the $file_headers variable. Here's the code snippet:

$file = 'http://www.example.com/somefile.jpg';
$file_headers = @get_headers($file);
if(!$file_headers || $file_headers[0] == 'HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found') {
    $exists = false;
}
else {
    $exists = true;
}

Method 2: curl_init()

This method initializes a cURL session. If the URL exists, the session will be created successfully. If not, the session creation will fail. Here's the code snippet:

function url_exists($url) {
    return curl_init($url) !== false;
}

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