PHP Curl check for file existence before downloading

Question

I am writing a PHP program that downloads a pdf from a backend and save to a local drive. Now how do I check whether the file exists before downloading?

Currently I

Answer 1

You can do this with a separate curl HEAD request:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);
$data = curl_exec($ch);

$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

When you actually want to download you can use set NOBODY to false.