How to check if website is accessible?

Question

I want to see if a website can be accessed or not with a PHP page.

Here is my plan:

<?php 
  $website = /* bool to see if site is up */
  if($website)
{
  echo'<iframe src="http://64.126.89.241/" width="100%" height="100%"/>';  
}else
{
  echo'<iframe src="http://tsiserver.us/backup/" width="100%" height="100%"/>';  
}
?>

The website will be hosted on another server, therefore if my internet goes down, a user may access the backup version of a site.

So, if `$website` is `true`, then it loads `64.126.89.241` or else `tsiserver.us`? What should be defining `$website` in the first place? — arielnmz, Jun 17 '14 at 17:36
I think the OP wants to know wether or not a website is accesible via its script — arielnmz, Jun 17 '14 at 17:37
The domain will be on another server to make sure the main server is up. If not, it will load a "cached" version of the site. — GTAWWEKID, Jun 17 '14 at 17:39
Thanks to the editor who has eased the pain in my ears (*eyes*). Gawd, don't you just hate it when people "shout"? ;-) — Funk Forty Niner, Jun 17 '14 at 17:40
@GTAWWEKID What exactly is the issue here? It it running, not running as expected, errors, ..? — Aziz Saleh, Jun 17 '14 at 17:41
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/959063/how-to-send-a-get-request-from-php You could find help here — CBergau, Jun 17 '14 at 17:41
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4607684/curl-and-ping-how-to-check-whether-a-website-is-either-up-or-down -- and here — Tasos, Jun 17 '14 at 17:48
@Fred-ii-: It's just a shame he forgot to remove the other fluff and cutesy love-heart BS. — The Blue Dog, Jun 17 '14 at 17:48
@TheBlueDog Did I miss the cute love-heart?! OOooohhhhh nooOOoooo.... // oh well, maybe I'll do a rollback. (NOT) ;-) Edit: Just saw that in the edits; aawwww so cute!! lol — Funk Forty Niner, Jun 17 '14 at 17:50
@Aziz Saleh, It is just a hassle to run a email server on Ubuntu, I wanted the main domain on a webhost's server for email, then to point website to my own server to use my mySQL database. — GTAWWEKID, Jun 17 '14 at 17:50
@GTAWWEKID Add the answer you feel should be marked as the answer as a new answer, not in the question itself. — Aziz Saleh, Jun 17 '14 at 18:01

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Here is a simple function that will determine if a website exists using PHP and cURL

function urlExists($url=NULL)  
{  
    if($url == NULL) return false;  
    $ch = curl_init($url);  
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);  
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5);  
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);  
    $data = curl_exec($ch);  
    $httpcode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);  
    curl_close($ch);  
    if($httpcode>=200 && $httpcode<300){  
        return true;  
    } else {  
        return false;  
    }  
}

This was grabbed from this post on how to check if a URL exists. Because Twitter should provide an error message above 300 when it is in maintenance, or a 404, this should work perfectly.

reference : https://stackoverflow.com/a/1239090/568414

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 17 '14 at 17:40

0

Based on your approach, you would need 3 different servers:

The server that hosts the script
The server that hosts the website
The server that hosts the fallback website

This is not so efficient and many hosting services provide fallback or cached versions of your site in case it's down, automatically. You don't have to mess with a script for this, but if you insist, you can refer to PHP's curl manual.

answered Jun 17 '14 at 17:40

arielnmz

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It is just a hassle to run a email server on Ubuntu, I wanted the main domain on a webhost's server for email, then to point website to my own server to use my mySQL database. – GTAWWEKID Jun 17 '14 at 17:47
In that case you may only want to open your mysql port on the firewall and make it accessible from the webhost, but why wouldn't you just export your database to the webhost? – arielnmz Jun 17 '14 at 17:55
Security reasons. The database should not be accessible from anything but localhost. – GTAWWEKID Jun 17 '14 at 17:57
If you export your database, it'd still be only accesible for localhost, only that localhost is now another host, but still, your db wouldn't be open to the internet. – arielnmz Jun 17 '14 at 18:00

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 19 '14 at 01:14

The answer is here, thanks guys!

<?php 
    function ping($host, $port, $timeout) { 
      $tB = microtime(true); 
      $fP = fSockOpen($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout); 
      if (!$fP) { return "down"; } 
      $tA = microtime(true); 
      return round((($tA - $tB) * 1000), 0)." ms"; 
    }


    $website = ping("64.126.89.241", 80, 10);
    if($website != "down"){
      echo'<iframe src="http://64.126.89.241/" width="100%" height="100%"/>';  
    }else{
      echo'<iframe src="http://tsiserver.us/backup/" width="100%" height="100%"/>';  
    }
?>

How to check if website is accessible?

3 Answers3