get_headers Inconsistency

Question

Running the following Code

var_dump(get_headers("http://www.domainnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.com/CraxyFile.jpg"));

Returns HTTP 200 instead of 404 For any domain or URL that does not exist

Array
(
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    [1] => Server: nginx/1.1.15
    [2] => Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:29:13 GMT
    [3] => Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
    [4] => Connection: close
    [5] => Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=3iucojet7bt2peub72rgo0iu21; path=/; HttpOnly
    [6] => Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
    [7] => Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
    [8] => Pragma: no-cache
    [9] => Set-Cookie: bypassStaticCache=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/; httponly
    [10] => Set-Cookie: bypassStaticCache=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/; httponly
    [11] => Vary: Accept
)

If you Run

var_dump(get_headers("http://www.domain.com/CraxyFile.jpg"));

You get

Array
(
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
    [1] => Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:32:18 GMT
    [2] => Content-Type: text/html
    [3] => Content-Length: 8727
    [4] => Connection: close
    [5] => Server: Apache
    [6] => Vary: Accept-Encoding
)

They are so many instances where get_headers has been proven to be a solution to validate existing URL

• What is the best way to check if a URL exists in PHP?
• How can I check if a URL exists via PHP?

Is This is a Bug or get_headers is not a reliable way for validating URL

See Live Demo

UPDATE 1

Got to find out that CURL also has the same issue

$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,CURLOPT_URL => 'idontexist.tld'));
curl_exec($curl);
$info = curl_getinfo($curl);
curl_close($curl);
var_dump($info);

Also returns the same result

Answer 1

The problem is nothing to do with the length of the domain name, it is simply whether the domain exists.

You are using a DNS service that resolves non-existent domains to a server that gives you a "friendly" error page, which it returns with a 200 response code. This means it is also not a problem with get_headers() specifically, it is any procedure with an underlying reliance on sensible DNS lookups.

A way to handle this without hardcoding a work around for every environment you work in might look something like this:

// A domain that definitely does not exist. The easiest way to guarantee that
// this continues to work is to use an illegal top-level domain (TLD) suffix
$testDomain = 'idontexist.tld';

// If this resolves to an IP, we know that we are behind a service such as this
// We can simply compare the actual domain we test with the result of this
$badIP = gethostbyname($testDomain);

// Then when you want to get_headers()
$url = 'http://www.domainnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.com/CraxyFile.jpg';

$host = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST);
if (gethostbyname($host) === $badIP) {
  // The domain does not exist - probably handle this as if it were a 404
} else {
  // do the actual get_headers() stuff here
}

You may want to somehow cache the return value of the first call to gethostbyname(), since you know you are looking up a name that does not exist, and this can often take a few seconds.