php header status description

Question

Just setting up a super simple API for something but I have a question. I'm calling the api, and it works perfectly, but I'm wondering about the header status code that's being return.

On all errors, I want to set the error to 500:

header('HTTP 1.1 500 invalid signature');

It's the description I'm curious about. Is there a way to grab that text using CuRL? I can get the code no problem, not the text.

Or can someone recommend and easier way of throwing a status of 500, and passing a string back through to the api file that can show what error happened?

Take a look at curl_error function: php.net/manual/en/function.curl-error.php — madfriend
– madfriend, Commented Feb 14, 2013 at 19:13
doesnt work because the url is still being loaded, so it returns as ok — David
– David, Commented Feb 14, 2013 at 19:27
If it is an API I suggest you don't need the response body for any data? So you could put your error/description string there. — shadowhorst
– shadowhorst, Commented Feb 14, 2013 at 19:48

fsw · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-12 22:34:34Z

1

If I were you I would use some other custom header for status message:

header('HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error');
header('My-Super-Custom-Error-Msg: invalid signature');

edited Mar 12, 2013 at 22:34

answered Feb 14, 2013 at 20:20

fsw

3,7253 gold badges23 silver badges35 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Josh Canfield Over a year ago

"As far as I am concerned text that comes after the status code is fixed by the HTTP 1.1 standard." This seems to be addressed in the standard: w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec6.html#sec6.1.1 "... an example set of corresponding Reason-Phrase's, are presented below. The reason phrases listed here are only recommendations -- they MAY be replaced by local equivalents without affecting the protocol"

fsw Over a year ago

Thanks a lot for noting this Josh. I was wrong indeed. I removed my false assumptions from answer.

Salman Arshad · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-14 21:09:52Z

cURL returns the complete response including headers when you set CURLOPT_HEADER option. The header and content are separated by two CRLF; the headers themselves are separated using CRLF. This information should be enough for you to parse the status header from the response:

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://localhost/err-500.php");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$data = curl_exec($ch);

list($header, $body) = explode("\r\n\r\n", $data, 2);
$header = explode("\r\n", $header);

echo $header[0];

Output:

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error

If you are interested in throwing an error, your script can emit the 500 response status plus a custom header with a single line of code:

Or you can use the header() function to set the response code:

header("X-Error-Message: Invalid Signature", true, 500);

PHP fills in the 1.1 and Internal Server Error portions of the status line:

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Content-Type: text/html
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.19
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-Error-Message: Invalid Signature
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:11:00 GMT
Content-Length: 100

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

php header status description

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related