Detect if url is a redirect or offline?

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Posted by lexington, 02-27-2008, 05:29 PM
Hello, is there some code I could use to check a url that a user enters into a field to see if that url is a direct to another site? Also, another error check to see if the site is online? Either one that you could help me with is fine. If you could post a working example that would be great. Thanks!
Posted by Barti1987, 02-27-2008, 09:45 PM
What do you mean "url is a direct to another site"? You mean if it redirects to another website using header redirect? Peace,
Posted by lexington, 02-27-2008, 09:50 PM
Hmm I suppose those sites are using header redirect. I am referring to when you view a site url and it redirects to another url. There should be a way for a script to detect that by comparing the first URL to a changed url or something?
Posted by Barti1987, 02-27-2008, 11:22 PM
There are two steps: Step one: Fetch the redirect url from the actual url Step two: use fopen to check if the url exist. Peace,
Posted by lexington, 02-27-2008, 11:48 PM
Meaning fopen(get_url($url)); ?
Posted by Barti1987, 02-28-2008, 11:50 AM
Depends on what the function is returning, that is why I used print_r($url). I am assuming that $url[0] contains the url, if you return that, then you can use fopen(get_url($url)). You are not trying to scrape a scripts directory. Are you? Peace,
Posted by lexington, 02-28-2008, 08:36 PM
Not sure what that means? I am adding this to my own site since some people add urls that appear to be normal but then redirect to a spam site so I want to add a check that sees if the url remains the same and if so it will allow it.
Posted by Barti1987, 02-28-2008, 09:21 PM
What if the site is doing a header redirect is actually fine (ex. site moved)? Peace,
Posted by Xeentech, 02-29-2008, 04:28 PM
Could we please avoid reimplementing an incomplete version of HTTP every time some one has a question like this. There are many many HTTP implementations available to reuse. Here's an example using cURL that I made in about a second.
Posted by lexington, 02-29-2008, 04:40 PM
Thanks I will try that
Posted by lexington, 02-29-2008, 06:31 PM
This works but it seems when the url is not a redirect it displays the website onto my own page. Is there a way to prevent that? If the site is a redirect it displays the printed error which works fine. EDIT I believe it is the curl_exec function that is displaying the other site on my page. Last edited by lexington; 02-29-2008 at 06:35 PM.
Posted by Xeentech, 02-29-2008, 08:29 PM
I guess you could write teh output to null like this:
Posted by lexington, 02-29-2008, 09:25 PM
Is that the full code to use? Because I do not see where it checks the site url in your new code.

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