Check if links are broken in php

You can check for broken link using this function:

function check_url($url) {

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch , CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    $headers = curl_getinfo($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    return $headers['http_code'];
}

You need to have CURL installed for this to work. Now you can check for broken links using:

$check_url_status = check_url($url);
if ($check_url_status == '200')
   echo "Link Works";
else
   echo "Broken Link";

Also check this link for HTTP status codes : HTTP Status Codes

I think you can also check for 301 and 302 status codes.

Also another method would be to use get_headers function . But this works only if your PHP version is greater than 5 :

function check_url($url) {
   $headers = @get_headers( $url);
   $headers = (is_array($headers)) ? implode( "n ", $headers) : $headers;

   return (bool)preg_match('#^HTTP/.*s+[(200|301|302)]+s#i', $headers);
}

In this case just check the output :

if (check_url($url))
   echo "Link Works";
else
   echo "Broken Link";

Hope this helps you :).

Here's what worked best for me when trying to script this (in case anyone else comes across this like I did):

$ pecl -d php_suffix=5.6 install <package>
$ pecl uninstall -r <package>

$ pecl -d php_suffix=7.0 install <package>
$ pecl uninstall -r <package>

$ pecl -d php_suffix=7.1 install <package>
$ pecl uninstall -r <package>

The -d php_suffix=<version> piece allows you to set config values at run time vs pre-setting them with pecl config-set. The uninstall -r bit does not actually uninstall it (from the docs):

vagrant@homestead:~$ pecl help uninstall
pecl uninstall [options] [channel/]<package> ...
Uninstalls one or more PEAR packages.  More than one package may be
specified at once.  Prefix with channel name to uninstall from a
channel not in your default channel (pecl.php.net)

Options:
  ...
  -r, --register-only
        do not remove files, only register the packages as not installed
  ...

The uninstall line is necessary otherwise installing it will remove any previously installed version, even if it was for a different PHP version (ex: Installing an extension for PHP 7.0 would remove the 5.6 version if the package was still registered as installed).

Never used any of those, but they look interesting..

Take a look at Gearman as well.. more overhead in systems like these but you get other cool stuff :) Guess it depends on your needs ..