Check if tweet status exists? - php

Question

I need a way to check if tweet exists. I have link to tweet like https://twitter.com/darknille/status/355651101657280512 . I preferably want a fast way to check (without retrieving body of page, just HEAD request), so I tried something like this
function if_curl_exists($url)
{
$resURL = curl_init();
curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION, 'curlHeaderCallback');
curl_setopt($resURL, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1);
$x = curl_exec ($resURL);
//var_dump($x);
echo $intReturnCode = curl_getinfo($resURL, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close ($resURL);
if ($intReturnCode != 200 && $intReturnCode != 302 && $intReturnCode != 304) {
return false;
}
else return true;
}
or like this
function if_curl_exists_1($url)
{
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);//head request
$result = curl_exec($curl);
$ret = false;
if ($result !== false) {
//if request was ok, check response code
echo $statusCode = curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($statusCode == 200) {
$ret = true;
}
}
curl_close($curl);
return $ret;
}
but both those return null with curl_exec(), there is nothing to check for http status code.
The other way is to use twitter api, like GET statuses/show/:id https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/statuses/show/%3Aid but there is no special return value if tweet doesn't exist, as said here https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/8802
I need advice whats the fastest way to check, I am doing in php.

Answer 1

You probably have to set the Return Transfer flag
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
If the code returns as 30x status you probably have to add the Follow Location flag as well
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);

Answer 2

You can use #get_header. It will return an array in which the first item has the response code:
$response = #get_headers($url);
print_r($response[0]);
if($response[0]=='HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found'){
echo 'Not Found';
}else{
echo 'Found';
}