Remote file size without downloading file

Question

Is there a way to get the size of a remote file http://my_url/my_file.txt without downloading the file?

Answer 1

Found something about this here:

Here's the best way (that I've found) to get the size of a remote file. Note that HEAD requests don't get the actual body of the request, they just retrieve the headers. So making a HEAD request to a resource that is 100MB will take the same amount of time as a HEAD request to a resource that is 1KB.

<?php
/**
 * Returns the size of a file without downloading it, or -1 if the file
 * size could not be determined.
 *
 * @param $url - The location of the remote file to download. Cannot
 * be null or empty.
 *
 * @return The size of the file referenced by $url, or -1 if the size
 * could not be determined.
 */
function curl_get_file_size( $url ) {
  // Assume failure.
  $result = -1;

  $curl = curl_init( $url );

  // Issue a HEAD request and follow any redirects.
  curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true );
  curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, true );
  curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );
  curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true );
  curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, get_user_agent_string() );

  $data = curl_exec( $curl );
  curl_close( $curl );

  if( $data ) {
    $content_length = "unknown";
    $status = "unknown";

    if( preg_match( "/^HTTP\/1\.[01] (\d\d\d)/", $data, $matches ) ) {
      $status = (int)$matches[1];
    }

    if( preg_match( "/Content-Length: (\d+)/", $data, $matches ) ) {
      $content_length = (int)$matches[1];
    }

    // http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes
    if( $status == 200 || ($status > 300 && $status <= 308) ) {
      $result = $content_length;
    }
  }

  return $result;
}
?>

Usage:

$file_size = curl_get_file_size( "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2602612/php-remote-file-size-without-downloading-file" );

Answer 2

Try this code

function retrieve_remote_file_size($url){
     $ch = curl_init($url);

     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, TRUE);
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, TRUE);

     $data = curl_exec($ch);
     $size = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_CONTENT_LENGTH_DOWNLOAD);

     curl_close($ch);
     return $size;
}

Answer 3

As mentioned a couple of times, the way to go is to retrieve the information from the response header's Content-Length field.

However, you should note that

• the server you're probing not necessarily implements the HEAD method(!)
• there's absolutely no need to manually craft a HEAD request (which, again, might not even be supported) using fopen or alike or even to invoke the curl library, when PHP has get_headers() (remember: K.I.S.S.)

Use of get_headers() follows the K.I.S.S. principle and works even if the server you're probing does not support the HEAD request.

So, here's my version (gimmick: returns human-readable formatted size ;-)):

Gist: https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/f26300ffd7e50a92bc4d (curl and get_headers version)
get_headers()-Version:

<?php     
/**
 *  Get the file size of any remote resource (using get_headers()), 
 *  either in bytes or - default - as human-readable formatted string.
 *
 *  @author  Stephan Schmitz <[email protected]>
 *  @license MIT <http://eyecatchup.mit-license.org/>
 *  @url     <https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/f26300ffd7e50a92bc4d>
 *
 *  @param   string   $url          Takes the remote object's URL.
 *  @param   boolean  $formatSize   Whether to return size in bytes or formatted.
 *  @param   boolean  $useHead      Whether to use HEAD requests. If false, uses GET.
 *  @return  string                 Returns human-readable formatted size
 *                                  or size in bytes (default: formatted).
 */
function getRemoteFilesize($url, $formatSize = true, $useHead = true)
{
    if (false !== $useHead) {
        stream_context_set_default(array('http' => array('method' => 'HEAD')));
    }
    $head = array_change_key_case(get_headers($url, 1));
    // content-length of download (in bytes), read from Content-Length: field
    $clen = isset($head['content-length']) ? $head['content-length'] : 0;

    // cannot retrieve file size, return "-1"
    if (!$clen) {
        return -1;
    }

    if (!$formatSize) {
        return $clen; // return size in bytes
    }

    $size = $clen;
    switch ($clen) {
        case $clen < 1024:
            $size = $clen .' B'; break;
        case $clen < 1048576:
            $size = round($clen / 1024, 2) .' KiB'; break;
        case $clen < 1073741824:
            $size = round($clen / 1048576, 2) . ' MiB'; break;
        case $clen < 1099511627776:
            $size = round($clen / 1073741824, 2) . ' GiB'; break;
    }

    return $size; // return formatted size
}

Usage:

$url = 'http://download.tuxfamily.org/notepadplus/6.6.9/npp.6.6.9.Installer.exe';
echo getRemoteFilesize($url); // echoes "7.51 MiB"

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Additional note: The Content-Length header is optional. Thus, as a general solution it isn't bullet proof!

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