How can PHP be used to retrieve file headers from a URL when the file is not on the same server?

When trying to retrieve file headers from a URL that is not on the same server, you can use PHP's cURL library to make a request to the remote URL and fetch the headers. This allows you to access information such as the content type, content length, and other metadata about the file. 

<?php
$url = 'https://example.com/file.pdf';

$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
$contentType = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_CONTENT_TYPE);
$contentLength = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_CONTENT_LENGTH_DOWNLOAD);

curl_close($ch);

echo "HTTP Code: $httpCode\n";
echo "Content Type: $contentType\n";
echo "Content Length: $contentLength\n";
?>

Keywords

PHP file headers URL remote server cURL

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