A function to see if a file exists with curl.

Snipplr-67835.txt

function file_alive($_path) {
  $handle   = curl_init($_path);
  if (false === $handle) {return false;}
  curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
  curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
  curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, Array("User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080623 Firefox/2.0.0.15") ); // request as if Firefox because some sites request a valid header from you
  curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);
  curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, false);
  $alive = curl_exec($handle);
  curl_close($handle);   
  return $alive;
}