Ping site and return result in PHP

Question

I'd like to create a small IF procedure that will check if Twitter is available (unlike now, for example), and will return true or false.

Help :)

Answer 1

function urlExists($url=NULL)   {       if($url == NULL) return false;       $ch = curl_init($url);       curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);       curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5);       curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);       $data = curl_exec($ch);       $httpcode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);       curl_close($ch);       if($httpcode>=200 && $httpcode<300){           return true;       } else {           return false;       }   }   

This was grabbed from this post on how to check if a URL exists. Because Twitter should provide an error message above 300 when it is in maintenance, or a 404, this should work perfectly.