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

Here is a solution that reads only the first byte of source code... returning false if the file_get_contents fails... This will also work for remote files like images.

 function urlExists($url)
{
    if (@file_get_contents($url,false,NULL,0,1))
    {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}