Parsing HTTP status code

Question

I am using PHP to parse the numeric portion of the HTTP status code response. Given a standard "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" response, I'd use:

$data = explode(' ', "HTTP/1.1 200 OK");
$code = $data[1];

I'm not an expert on HTTP. Would I ever encounter a response where the code is not at the position of $data[1] as in the above example? I just want to be sure that this method of delimiting the response code will always work for any response.

Thanks, Brian

if your using cURL you could be like: curl_getinfo($ch,CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE); which will return 200 or whatever the http status is. — Mickey
– Mickey, Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 7:20

caf · Accepted Answer · 2009-09-18 03:58:24Z

17

When in doubt, check the spec. The spec in this case, for HTTP/1.1, is RFC2616. In Section 6.1, it describes the Status-Line, the first component of a Response, as:

Status-Line = HTTP-Version SP Status-Code SP Reason-Phrase CRLF

That is - a single ASCII space (SP) must separate the HTTP-Version and the Status-Code - and if you check the definition of HTTP-Version (in Section 3.1) it cannot include a space, and neither can the Status-Code.

So you are good to go with that code.

answered Sep 18, 2009 at 3:58

caf

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RageZ · Accepted Answer · 2009-09-18 03:55:49Z

7

No if the webserver respect the standards doing an explode and caching the second item of the array is fine

if you really wants to be sure use a regular expression

i.e.

preg_match('|HTTP/\d\.\d\s+(\d+)\s+.*|',$subject,$match);
var_dump($match[1]);

Cheers

answered Sep 18, 2009 at 3:55

RageZ

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David Z · Accepted Answer · 2009-09-18 03:54:12Z

6

No, you would never encounter a response (if it's a proper HTTP response) which has a different format. See the HTTP RFC (2616).

answered Sep 18, 2009 at 3:54

David Z

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1 Comment

mjv Over a year ago

See 6.1 Status-Line in both RFC 2616 (http 1.1) and RFC 1945 (http 1.0). They both ensure this 3 parts, space delimited format.

Matthew Scharley · Accepted Answer · 2009-09-18 03:54:58Z

2

No, what you are doing is OK if all you want is the numeric. If however you want the message as well, you'll end up splitting it too, ie.

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

answered Sep 18, 2009 at 3:54

Matthew Scharley

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grantwparks Over a year ago

To prevent that, I use the optional $limit argument like: $aHttpResp = explode(' ', HttpComm::$headers[0], 3); // HTTP/1.x ccc ~long description of the response~

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