HTTP context options — HTTP context option listing
Context options for http://
and https://
transports.
method
string
GET
, POST
, or
any other HTTP method supported by the remote server.
Defaults to GET
.
header
array or string
Additional headers to be sent during request. Values
in this option will override other values (such as
User-agent:
, Host:
,
and Authentication:
),
even when following Location:
redirects.
Thus it is not recommended to set a Host:
header,
if follow_location
is enabled.
String value should be Key: value
pairs delimited by
\r\n
, e.g.
"Content-Type: application/json\r\nConnection: close"
.
Array value should be a list of Key: value
pairs, e.g.
["Content-Type: application/json", "Connection: close"]
.
user_agent
string
Value to send with User-Agent:
header. This value will
only be used if user-agent is not specified
in the header
context option above.
By default the user_agent php.ini setting is used.
content
string
Additional data to be sent after the headers. Typically used with POST or PUT requests.
proxy
string
URI specifying address of proxy server (e.g.
tcp://proxy.example.com:5100
).
request_fulluri
bool
When set to true
, the entire URI will be used when
constructing the request (e.g.
GET http://www.example.com/path/to/file.html HTTP/1.0
).
While this is a non-standard request format, some
proxy servers require it.
Defaults to false
.
follow_location
int
Follow Location
header redirects. Set to
0
to disable.
Defaults to 1
.
max_redirects
int
The max number of redirects to follow. Value 1
or
less means that no redirects are followed.
Defaults to 20
.
protocol_version
float
HTTP protocol version.
Defaults to 1.1
as of PHP 8.0.0;
prior to that version the default was 1.0
.
timeout
float
Read timeout in seconds, specified by a float
(e.g. 10.5
).
By default the default_socket_timeout php.ini setting is used.
ignore_errors
bool
Fetch the content even on failure status codes.
Defaults to false
.
Example #1 Fetch a page and send POST data
<?php
$postdata = http_build_query(
[
'var1' => 'some content',
'var2' => 'doh',
]
);
$opts = [
'http' => [
'method' => 'POST',
'header' => 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'content' => $postdata,
]
];
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$result = file_get_contents('http://example.com/submit.php', false, $context);
?>
Example #2 Ignore redirects but fetch headers and content
<?php
$url = "http://www.example.org/header.php";
$opts = [
'http' => [
'method' => 'GET',
'max_redirects' => '0',
'ignore_errors' => '1',
]
];
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$stream = fopen($url, 'r', false, $context);
// header information as well as meta data
// about the stream
var_dump(stream_get_meta_data($stream));
// actual data at $url
var_dump(stream_get_contents($stream));
fclose($stream);
?>
Note: Underlying socket stream context options
Additional context options may be supported by the underlying transport Forhttp://
streams, refer to context options for thetcp://
transport. Forhttps://
streams, refer to context options for thessl://
transport.
Note: HTTP status line
When this stream wrapper follows a redirect, thewrapper_data
returned by stream_get_meta_data() might not necessarily contain the HTTP status line that actually applies to the content data at index0
.The first request returned aarray ( 'wrapper_data' => array ( 0 => 'HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently', 1 => 'Cache-Control: no-cache', 2 => 'Connection: close', 3 => 'Location: http://example.com/foo.jpg', 4 => 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK', ...301
(permanent redirect), so the stream wrapper automatically followed the redirect to get a200
response (index =4
).
Note that if you set the protocol_version option to 1.1 and the server you are requesting from is configured to use keep-alive connections, the function (fopen, file_get_contents, etc.) will "be slow" and take a long time to complete. This is a feature of the HTTP 1.1 protocol you are unlikely to use with stream contexts in PHP.
Simply add a "Connection: close" header to the request to eliminate the keep-alive timeout:
<?php
// php 5.4 : array syntax and header option with array value
$data = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/', null, stream_context_create([
'http' => [
'protocol_version' => 1.1,
'header' => [
'Connection: close',
],
],
]));
?>
note that for both http and https protocols require the same 'http' context keyword:
<?php
// CORRECT example:
// this will work as expected
// note the url with https but context with http
$correct_data = file_get_contents('https://example.com', false, stream_context_create(array('http' => array(...))));
// INVALID example:
// this will not work, the context will be ignored
// note the url with https also context with https
$correct_data = file_get_contents('https://example.com', false, stream_context_create(array('https' => array(...))));
With the default of
'follow_location' => 1
be certain NEVER include a "Host:" header in the 'header' array.
If the host is set to "mydomain.com", and that web site has a (quite common) redirect to "www.mydomain.com", then the initial request to "http://mydomain.com" will get the expected response of:
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.mydomain.com/
However, the follow-up request does NOT replace the original "host" header with the new "location" value, as one would expect. Consequently each "follow-location" request will again be served by the original host of "http://mydomain.com", and continue the redirect loop until 'max_redirects' has been exhausted.
(For details: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=77889)
note that both http and https transports require the same context name http
// OK example:
// this will work as expected
// note the url with https but context with http
$correct_data = file_get_contents('https://example.com', false, stream_context_create(array('http' => array(...))));
// INVALID example:
// this will not work, the context will be ignored
// note the url with https also context with https
$correct_data = file_get_contents('https://example.com', false, stream_context_create(array('https' => array(...))));
Note that setting request_fulluri to true will *change* the value of $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI] on the receiving end (from /abc.php to http://domain.com/abc.php).
watch your case when using methods (POST and GET)...it must be always uppercase. in case of you write it in lower case it wont work.
If you want to use Basic Auth while using get_headers(), use stream_context options below.
I am using HEAD method here, but please feel free to use GET also.
<?php
$targetUrl = 'http or https target url here';
$basicAuth = base64_encode('username:password');
stream_context_set_default(
[
'http' => [
'method' => 'HEAD',
'header' => 'Authorization: Basic ' . $basicAuth
]
]
);
$result = get_headers($targetUrl);
print_r($result);
It's worth noting that the `header` array seems to only want an array of strings, not an associative array.
I just spent a chunk of time debugging something not working as expected (no errors though) which was fixed by converting an associative array of headers into a simple array of strings.
If you use the proxy server and encounter an error "fopen(http://example.com): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request" note that in many situations you need also set the parameter "request_fulluri" to "true" in your stream options. Without this option the php script sends the empty request to the server as "GET / HTTP/0.0" and the proxy server replies to it with the "HTTP 400" error.
For example (working sample):
<?php
$stream = stream_context_create(Array("http" => Array("method" => "GET",
"timeout" => 20,
"header" => "User-agent: Myagent",
"proxy" => "tcp://my-proxy.localnet:3128",
'request_fulluri' => True /* without this option we get an HTTP error! */
)));
if ( $fp = fopen("http://example.com", 'r', false, $stream) ) {
print "well done";
}
?>
P>S> PHP 5.3.17
Remember to match content with Content-type:
<?php
$data = array(
'var1' => 'some content',
'var2' => 'doh'
);
$opts = array('http' =>
array(
'method' => 'POST',
'header' => 'Content-type: application/json', // here...
'content' => json_encode($data) // and here.
)
);
. . .
?>
I had quite a bit of trouble trying to make a request with fopen through a proxy to a secure url. I kept getting a 400 Bad Request back from the remote host. It was receiving the proxy url as the SNI host. In order to get around this I had to explicity set the SNI host to the domain I was trying to reach. It's apparently the issue outlined in this bug:
https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=63519
<?php
$domain = parse_url($file, PHP_URL_HOST);
$proxy_string = "tcp://" . WP_PROXY_HOST . ":" . WP_PROXY_PORT;
$opts = array(
'http' => array( 'proxy' => $proxy_string ),
'ssl' => array( 'SNI_enabled' => true, 'SNI_server_name' => $domain));
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$handle = fopen( $file, 'r', false, $context );
?>
If you pass the 'header' option as a string and you have multiple headers, they must be separated by "\r\n".