Check if image exists on remote server before downloading

Question

Im trying to download images from remote server, resize and then save it local machine.

To do this I use a WideImage.

<?php 

include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'libraries/wideimage/index.php');

include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'query.php');    


do { 


wideImage::load($row_getImages['remote'])->resize(360, 206, 'outside')->saveToFile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$row_getImages['local']);}

while ($row_getImages = mysql_fetch_assoc($getImages)); 


?>

This works most of the time. But it has a fatal flaw.

If for some reason one of these images is not available or doesn't exists. Wideimage throws a fatal error. Preventing any further images that may exist from downloading.

I have tried checking file exists like this

    do { 

if(file_exists($row_getImages['remote'])){

    wideImage::load($row_getImages['remote'])->resize(360, 206, 'outside')->saveToFile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$row_getImages['local']);}

}        
    while ($row_getImages = mysql_fetch_assoc($getImages));

But this doesn't work.

What am I doing wrong??

Thanks

Why does the `file_exists()` check work and how is `$row_getImages` defined? — Explosion Pills, May 06 '11 at 14:56
$row_getImages is defined in query.php which is included. file_exists() doesn't seem to work at all. — jamjam, May 06 '11 at 15:00
Not sure what happen to answer that mentioned "try" and "catch" but it worked. Thanks everyone. — jamjam, May 06 '11 at 15:11
Can you add your try and catch solution to your post so others can benefit from it too? — RST, May 09 '13 at 13:48

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered May 06 '11 at 14:57

5

According to this page, file_exists cannot check for remote files. Someone suggested there, in the comments, that they use fopen as a workaround:

<?php
function fileExists($path){
    return (@fopen($path,"r")==true);
}
?>

answered May 06 '11 at 14:57

Dave

28,833
23
113
183

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 03 '16 at 00:14

After some digging around the net I decided on requesting the HTTP headers, instead of a CURL request, as apparently it's less overhead.

This is an adaption of Nick's comment from the PHP forums at: http://php.net/manual/en/function.get-headers.php

function get_http_response_code($theURL) {
   $headers = get_headers($theURL);
   return substr($headers[0], 9, 3);
}
$URL = htmlspecialchars($postURL);
$statusCode = intval(get_http_response_code($URL));

if($statusCode == 200) { // 200 = ok
    echo '<img src="'.htmlspecialchars($URL).'" alt="Image: '.htmlspecialchars($URL).'" />';
} else {
    echo '<img src="/Img/noPhoto.jpg" alt="This remote image link is broken" />';
}

Nick calls this function "a quick and nasty solution", although it is working well for me :-)

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 06 '11 at 15:02

0

You could check via CURL:

$curl = curl_init('http://example.com/my_image.jpg');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, TRUE);
$httpcode = curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($curl);
if($httpcode < 400) {
  // do stuff
}

answered May 06 '11 at 15:02

scurker

4,733
1
26
25

Not working. Always "$httpcode" is less than 400, file exists or not does not. Very bad post. – Banty Roy Mar 20 '14 at 08:15

Check if image exists on remote server before downloading

3 Answers3