Link validation

[cmhunt]

I would like create a link depending upon whether the link is working or not. Is there anyway of testing whether a link produces a "Page Cannot be displayed" so I can substitute this for another link before sending to the client?

Any help is gratefully appreciated.

Thanks

Chris

 

[skiflyer]

You could use curl to submit the page and return the output into a variable. Then parse this looking for the errors you want to parse out.

I imagine you'll need to discover several errors and such, and then figure out the most unique text to look for so that you're not fooled if someone has similar text pasted into their document.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.curl.php

-Rob

 

[sleipnir214]

It may not be necessary to use curl.

If your version of PHP supports using a URL in the fopen command, you could read the content returned and search for a particular string. (

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fopen.php)

Also, if you have fsockopen available to you, you could sent the HTTP necessary to try to retrieve the page -- all you need it the HTTP return status code, which appears early in the return, so you would not have to read much back before closing the socket. (

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fsockopen.php)

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!