A simple HTTP client for PHP that uses curl:

   1  class HTTP {
   2      static function get($url, $headers=null) {
   3          $ch = curl_init();
   4          curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
   5          curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
   6          curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
   7  
   8          if($headers) {
   9              curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
  10          }
  11  
  12          // Execute request
  13          $response = curl_exec($ch);
  14  
  15          // Split headers and body
  16          list($header_text, $body) = explode("\r\n\r\n", $response, 2);
  17          $header_lines = explode("\r\n", $header_text);
  18  
  19          // Extract HTTP status
  20          $header_line = array_shift($header_lines);
  21          if (preg_match('@^HTTP/[0-9]\.[0-9] ([0-9]{3})@', $header_line, $matches)) {
  22              $status = $matches[1];
  23          }
  24  
  25          // Extract HTTP headers
  26          $headers = array();
  27          foreach ($header_lines as $header_line) {
  28              list($header, $value) = explode(': ', $header_line, 2);
  29              $headers[$header] = $value;
  30          }
  31  
  32          $info = curl_getinfo($ch); 
  33  
  34          curl_close($ch);    
  35  
  36          $status = $info['http_code'];
  37  
  38          return new Response($status, $body, $headers, $info);
  39      }
  40  }

Even supports reading response headers.

   1  class Response  {
   2      public function Response($code, $body, $headers, $info=null) {
   3          $this->code = $code;
   4          $this->body = $body;
   5          $this->headers = $headers;
   6          $this->info = $info;
   7      }
   8  }

A simple HTTP client I had lying around that I wrote a long time ago. It supports cookies, redirects and stuff:

   1  #!/usr/bin/env python
   2  #
   3  #     Http
   4  #
   5  #     A simple HTTP client that supports persistent cookies
   6  #
   7  
   8  import cookielib
   9  import httplib
  10  #httplib.HTTPConnection.debuglevel = 1
  11  import urllib2
  12  
  13  class Http:
  14    def __init__(self, redirect_callback = None):
  15      self.redirect_callback = redirect_callback
  16      self.cookie_jar = cookielib.CookieJar()
  17      self.opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor (self.cookie_jar))
  18  
  19      urllib2.install_opener(self.opener)
  20  
  21    def get(self, url, headers = None):
  22      request = urllib2.Request(url, headers = headers)
  23      return self.execute_request(request)
  24  
  25    def post(self, url, headers = None, parameters = None):
  26      data = None
  27      if parameters != None:
  28        data = urllib.urlencode(parameters)
  29  
  30      request = urllib2.Request(url, data, headers)
  31      return self.execute_request(request)
  32  
  33    def execute_request(self, request):
  34      response = self.opener.open(request)
  35      # Check for redirect, maybe better way to do this
  36      if response.geturl() != request.get_full_url():
  37        if self.redirect_callback == None:
  38          raise "Redirected to '" + response.geturl() + "' but no redirect callback defined"
  39        else:
  40          self.redirect_callback(response)
  41  
  42      return response
  43  

This is an example of how to upload a file from PHP to another server that may or may not be running PHP.

Note that using Pear’s HTTP_Request package is probably easier.

   1  <?php
   2    require_once('Var_Dump.php');
   3    Var_Dump::displayInit(array('display_mode' => 'HTML4_Text'), array('mode' => 'normal','offset' => 4));
   4  
   5    $url = 'www.aktagon.com/upload';
   6    $file = '/tmp/file_to_upload';
   7    $post_data = array();
   8  
   9    $post_data['username'] = '';
  10    $post_data['password'] = '';
  11    $post_data['file'] = "@$file";
  12  
  13    $ch = curl_init();
  14  
  15    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
  16    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
  17  #    'Cookie: xxxx',
  18  #    'Content-Type: xxxx'
  19    ));
  20    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
  21    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
  22    #curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, '127.0.0.1:8888');
  23  
  24    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
  25  
  26    $response  = curl_exec($ch);
  27    $info      = curl_getinfo($ch); 
  28    $http_code = $info['http_code'];
  29    $speed     = round($info['speed_upload'] / 1024);
  30    $size      = round($info['size_upload'] / 1024);
  31  
  32    if($http_code != 200)
  33    {
  34      echo "Upload failed with HTTP code $http_code. Uploaded $size kilobytes with $speed kilobytes/s.<br/>";
  35      echo "<h1>Response</h1><pre>$response</pre><h1>Debug information</h1>";
  36  
  37      Var_Dump::display($info);
  38    }
  39    else
  40    {
  41      echo "Uploaded successful. Uploaded $size kilobytes with $speed kilobytes / s.<br/>";
  42      echo "<h1>Response</h1><pre>$response</pre>";
  43    }
  44    curl_close($ch);
  45  ?>
  46  

You can remove the Var_Dump code (Pear module), if you haven’t installed it, or don’t need it.