HTTP and HTTPS
PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 6. https:// since PHP 4.3.0
- http://example.com
- http://example.com/file.php?var1=val1&var2=val2
- http://user:[email protected]
- https://example.com
- https://example.com/file.php?var1=val1&var2=val2
- https://user:[email protected]
Allows read-only access to files/resources via HTTP 1.0,
using the HTTP GET method. A Host: header is sent with the request
to handle name-based virtual hosts. If you have configured
a user_agent string using
your ini file or the stream context, it will also be included
in the request.
WarningWhen using SSL, Microsoft IIS
will violate the protocol by closing the connection without sending a
close_notify indicator. PHP will report this as "SSL: Fatal
Protocol Error" when you reach the end of the data. To work around this, the
value of error_reporting should be
lowered to a level that does not include warnings.
PHP 4.3.7 and higher can detect buggy IIS server software when you open
the stream using the https:// wrapper and will suppress the
warning. When using fsockopen() to create an
ssl:// socket, the developer is responsible for detecting
and suppressing this warning.
Redirects have been supported since PHP 4.0.5; if you are using
an earlier version you will need to include trailing slashes in
your URLs. If it's important to know the URL of the resource where
your document came from (after all redirects have been processed),
you'll need to process the series of response headers returned by the
stream.
The stream allows access to the body of
the resource; the headers are stored in the
$http_response_header variable.
Since PHP 4.3.0, the headers are available using
stream_get_meta_data().
HTTP connections are read-only; you cannot write data or copy
files to an HTTP resource.
Note:
HTTPS is supported starting from PHP 4.3.0, if you
have compiled in support for OpenSSL.
Wrapper Summary
| Attribute |
Supported |
| Restricted by allow_url_fopen |
Yes |
| Allows Reading |
Yes |
| Allows Writing |
No |
| Allows Appending |
No |
| Allows Simultaneous Reading and Writing |
N/A |
| Supports stat() |
No |
| Supports unlink() |
No |
| Supports rename() |
No |
| Supports mkdir() |
No |
| Supports rmdir() |
No |
Custom headers may be sent with an HTTP request prior to
version 5 by taking advantage of a side-effect in the
handling of the user_agent INI setting.
Set user_agent to any valid string
(such as the default PHP/version setting)
followed by a carriage-return/line-feed pair and any
additional headers.
This method works in PHP 4 and all later versions.
Example #1 Sending custom headers with an HTTP request
<?php
ini_set('user_agent', "PHP\r\nX-MyCustomHeader: Foo");
$fp = fopen('http://www.example.com/index.php', 'r');
?>
Results in the following request being sent:
GET /index.php HTTP/1.0
Host: www.example.com
User-Agent: PHP
X-MyCustomHeader: Foo
Load balance : Server 04
