Check if image exists on remote server before downloading - php

Question

Im trying to download images from remote server, resize and then save it local machine.
To do this I use a WideImage.
<?php
include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'libraries/wideimage/index.php');
include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'query.php');
do {
wideImage::load($row_getImages['remote'])->resize(360, 206, 'outside')->saveToFile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$row_getImages['local']);}
while ($row_getImages = mysql_fetch_assoc($getImages));
?>
This works most of the time. But it has a fatal flaw.
If for some reason one of these images is not available or doesn't exists.
Wideimage throws a fatal error. Preventing any further images that may exist from downloading.
I have tried checking file exists like this
do {
if(file_exists($row_getImages['remote'])){
wideImage::load($row_getImages['remote'])->resize(360, 206, 'outside')->saveToFile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$row_getImages['local']);}
}
while ($row_getImages = mysql_fetch_assoc($getImages));
But this doesn't work.
What am I doing wrong??
Thanks

Answer 1

According to this page, file_exists cannot check for remote files. Someone suggested there, in the comments, that they use fopen as a workaround:
<?php
function fileExists($path){
return (#fopen($path,"r")==true);
}
?>

Answer 2

You could check via CURL:
$curl = curl_init('http://example.com/my_image.jpg');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, TRUE);
$httpcode = curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($curl);
if($httpcode < 400) {
// do stuff
}

Answer 3

After some digging around the net I decided on requesting the HTTP headers, instead of a CURL request, as apparently it's less overhead.
This is an adaption of Nick's comment from the PHP forums at:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.get-headers.php
function get_http_response_code($theURL) {
$headers = get_headers($theURL);
return substr($headers[0], 9, 3);
}
$URL = htmlspecialchars($postURL);
$statusCode = intval(get_http_response_code($URL));
if($statusCode == 200) { // 200 = ok
echo '<img src="'.htmlspecialchars($URL).'" alt="Image: '.htmlspecialchars($URL).'" />';
} else {
echo '<img src="/Img/noPhoto.jpg" alt="This remote image link is broken" />';
}
Nick calls this function "a quick and nasty solution", although it is working well for me :-)