What are some alternative methods to determine file size in PHP aside from using the filesize() function?

The filesize() function in PHP may not always be reliable, especially when handling remote files or when the function is disabled. An alternative method to determine file size is to use cURL to fetch the headers of the file, which include the Content-Length header indicating the size of the file. This method can be used as a fallback when the filesize() function is not suitable. 

function getFileSizeUsingCurl($url) {
    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);
    curl_exec($ch);
    
    $size = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_CONTENT_LENGTH_DOWNLOAD);
    
    curl_close($ch);
    
    return $size;
}

$fileUrl = 'https://example.com/file.txt';
$fileSize = getFileSizeUsingCurl($fileUrl);

echo 'File size: ' . $fileSize . ' bytes';

Keywords

file size alternative methods PHP function

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