PHP Cookbook

11.4. Fetching a URL with Headers

Problem

You want to retrieve a URL that requires specific headers to be sent with the request for the page.

Solution

Use the cURL extension and the CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER option:

$c = curl_init('http://www.example.com/special-header.php');
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('X-Factor: 12', 'My-Header: Bob'));
$page = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);

If cURL isn’t available, use the addHeader( ) method in HTTP_Request:

require 'HTTP/Request.php';

$r = new HTTP_Request('http://www.example.com/special-header.php');
$r->addHeader('X-Factor',12);
$r->addHeader('My-Header','Bob');
$r->sendRequest();
$page = $r->getResponseBody();

Discussion

cURL has special options for setting the Referer and User-Agent request headers — CURLOPT_REFERER and CURLOPT_USERAGENT:

$c = curl_init('http://www.example.com/submit.php');
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_REFERER, 'http://www.example.com/form.php');
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'CURL via PHP');
$page = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);

See Also

Recipe 11.14 explains why “referrer” is often misspelled “referer” in web programming contexts; documentation on curl_setopt( ) at http://www.php.net/curl-setopt; the PEAR HTTP_Request class at http://pear.php.net/package-info.php?package=HTTP_Request.