What are some common pitfalls when using the get_headers function in PHP to check for URL existence?

One common pitfall when using the get_headers function in PHP to check for URL existence is that it may return false positives for URLs that do not exist. This can happen if the server returns a redirect or error response instead of a 404 status code. To solve this issue, you can check for the presence of a 200 status code in the response headers. 

$url = 'https://example.com';

$headers = @get_headers($url);

if ($headers && strpos($headers[0], '200') !== false) {
    echo 'URL exists';
} else {
    echo 'URL does not exist';
}

Keywords

get_headers PHP URL existence error handling HTTP headers

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