Retrieving Response Headers and Body in a Single PHP cURL Request

PHP's cURL library provides the ability to perform HTTP requests, making it versatile for data fetching and communication tasks. However, a common challenge encountered when using cURL is the need to retrieve both response headers and body in a single request.

By default, setting CURLOPT_HEADER to true returns both headers and body combined in the response, which requires further parsing to extract the individual components. For a more efficient and secure approach, an alternative method can be employed:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);

// Execute the request
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Extract header and body
$header_size = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE);
$header = substr($response, 0, $header_size);
$body = substr($response, $header_size);

This method separates headers from the body using the CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE information. Note that this approach may have limitations when dealing with proxy servers or certain types of redirects. Consider using the following solution for increased reliability in such cases:

function get_headers_body($url) {
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);

    // Execute the request and get headers only
    $headers = curl_exec($ch);

    // Close the original handle
    curl_close($ch);

    // Set the necessary header information to a new handle
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));

    foreach (explode("\n", $headers) as $header) {
        // Remove set-cookie headers
        if (stripos($header, 'set-cookie') !== false) {
            continue;
        }
        // Add it to the request
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array($header));
    }

    // Execute the request and get the body only
    $body = curl_exec($ch);

    // Close the handle
    curl_close($ch);

    return array(
        'headers' => $headers,
        'body' => $body
    );
}

This solution provides greater control over the header retrieval process, ensuring more reliable results.

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