What are some common methods to check if a URL or server is reachable in PHP?

To check if a URL or server is reachable in PHP, you can use methods like cURL, file_get_contents, or fsockopen. These functions allow you to send a request to the URL or server and check for a response. 

// Using cURL to check if a URL is reachable
function isUrlReachable($url) {
    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
    curl_exec($ch);
    
    $httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    curl_close($ch);
    
    return $httpCode >= 200 && $httpCode < 400;
}

// Example usage
$url = "http://example.com";
if(isUrlReachable($url)) {
    echo "URL is reachable";
} else {
    echo "URL is not reachable";
}

Keywords

PHP URL server reachable methods

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