XLIII. HTTP Functions

Introduction

These functions let you manipulate the output sent back to the remote browser right down to the HTTP protocol level.

Requirements

No external libraries are needed to build this extension.

Installation

There is no installation needed to use these functions; they are part of the PHP core.

Runtime Configuration

This extension has no configuration directives defined in php.ini.

Resource Types

This extension has no resource types defined.

Predefined Constants

This extension has no constants defined.

Table of Contents
header -- Send a raw HTTP header
headers_list -- Returns a list of response headers sent (or ready to send)
headers_sent -- Checks if or where headers have been sent
setcookie -- Send a cookie
setrawcookie -- Send a cookie without urlencoding the cookie value

User Contributed Notes
HTTP Functions

WeeJames
07-Jul-2004 02:39


Regarding what the guy before said.  We've experienced problems where certain firewalls have encrypted the HTTP_REFERER meaning that it doesnt always contain the place you've come from.



Better to track where the user has come from either in a form post or in the url.

27-Apr-2004 10:05


in reference to toashwinisidhu's and breaker's note, a more effective way would be to use meta-tag redirect, for example.



<?php

$url = "http://somesite.com/index.php"; // target of the redirect

$delay = "3"; // 3 second delay



echo '<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="'.$delay.';url='.$url.'">';



?>



The meta goes in the head of the HTML.

This method does not require javascript and is supported by most browsers and is rarely, if ever, filterd out.

toashwinisidhu at yahoo dot com
21-Apr-2004 06:55


The method given below may not sometimes work.

The following method has always worked with me:

just put the following 3 lines in your PHP code



?>

<body onload=setTimeout("location.href='$url'",$sec)>

<?PHP

-------?>



$sec is the time in second after which the browser would automatically go to the url. Set it to 0 if you do not want to give any time.

You can use this function on the events of various html/form objects (eg.-onclick for button).eg.

<input type=button value="Go to Php.net" onclick=setTimeout("location.href='php.net'",0)>

Use this to one step back

<input type="button" value="Back" onclick=history.go(-1)>

breaker at coder dot hu
15-Mar-2003 11:15


[Editor's Note:] This method uses JavaScript which requires the visitor's browser to have javascript enabled [/Note]





Another way, to redirect to an url without any notification or message:


Print("window.location='$urlvar';");

nf at wh3rd dot net
06-Sep-2002 02:57


If you're wanting to perform an HTTP POST, I've written a small but useful function to do so:



http://nf.wh3rd.net/projects/http.inc/

krisj at blueridge dot net
23-Jan-2001 07:41


When using the $SERVER_NAME or other predefined variables within a function BE SURE to use $GLOBALS["SERVER_NAME"] in its place =)

jeffp-php at outofservice dot com
04-Jan-2001 11:37


$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA --





You'll usually access variables from forms sent via POST method by just accessing the associated PHP global variable.





However, if your POST data is not URI encoded (i.e., custom application that's not form-based) PHP won't parse the data into nice variables for you.  You will need to use $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA to access the raw data directly. (This should return a copy of the data given to the PHP process on STDIN; note that you wan't be able to open STDIN and read it yourself because PHP already did so itself.)

dhpainter at msn dot com
26-Apr-2000 01:35


To create a link to the previous page you can use the


 getenv("HTTP_REFERER")


command and  set it up as a hyperlink. You might also want to put a IF condition on it so it won't get displayed if the user has gone straight in to the page.