PHP last modification time of the remote file

Question

I want to get last modification time of the remote file. I am using this code I found here on stackoverflow

$curl = curl_init();

    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
    //don't fetch the actual page, you only want headers
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
    //stop it from outputting stuff to stdout
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

    // attempt to retrieve the modification date
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FILETIME, true);

    $result = curl_exec($curl);
    echo $result;
    $info = curl_getinfo($curl);
    print_r($info);
    if ($info['filetime'] != -1) { //otherwise unknown
        echo date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $info['filetime']); //etc
    }  

Problem with this code I am getting filetime = -1 all the time. But when I delete

curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);

then I am getting correct modification time.

Is it possible to get last modification time but with

curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);

included in the script. I just need header of the page, not body.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Given the added information in our Q/A discussion, it sure sounds like you're just not getting a response. It could be that the server is configured with some sort of which intentionally or inadvertently blocks HEAD requests for some reason, or there could be a difficult proxy involved.

When I'm debugging PHP cURL stuff, I often find it useful to use a *nix box (my mac, or ssh to a server) and run the requests from the command line, so I can see the result without worrying about if the PHP is doing the right thing, until I get the cURL part working. For instance:

$ curl --head stackoverflow.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: public, max-age=49
Content-Length: 190214
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Expires: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:22:07 GMT
Last-Modified: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:21:07 GMT
Vary: *
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:21:17 GMT