How can I check if a URL exists via PHP?

Question

How do I check if a URL exists (not 404) in PHP?

Answer 1

All above solutions + extra sugar. (Ultimate AIO solution)

/**
 * Check that given URL is valid and exists.
 * @param string $url URL to check
 * @return bool TRUE when valid | FALSE anyway
 */
function urlExists ( $url ) {
    // Remove all illegal characters from a url
    $url = filter_var($url, FILTER_SANITIZE_URL);

    // Validate URI
    if (filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) === FALSE
        // check only for http/https schemes.
        || !in_array(strtolower(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_SCHEME)), ['http','https'], true )
    ) {
        return false;
    }

    // Check that URL exists
    $file_headers = @get_headers($url);
    return !(!$file_headers || $file_headers[0] === 'HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found');
}

Example:

var_dump ( urlExists('http://stackoverflow.com/') );
// Output: true;