Alex Elderson wrote: >The problem is the "Connection: Close\n\n" header. The webserver close the connection >after the first request, if i remove >the "Connection: Close\n\n" header the first fgets($web_conn, 128) command will never >ends. > This is because persistent TCP connections are the default behavior of HTTP/1.1. In HTTP/1.0, the client had to specifically request a persistent connection via the use of a "Connection: Keep-Alive" header in the HTTP request. Now (HTTP/1.1) it is quite the opposite; the client must specifically request for the server to close the connection with a "Connection: Close" header in the HTTP request.
What is happening for you is this: 1) you use PHP socket functions to manually generate an HTTP request to a remote Web server 2) The Web server responds to your request and likely includes a "Connection: Close" header in the response. It does not, however, close the connection itself. It is simply letting you know that it is finished. 3) You do not parse the response or close the connection. You just sit there, and thus, nothing happens until a timeout condition is reached. You are basically implementing a primitive Web client, which is a very rewarding experience in terms of the education you provide yourself. It requires you, however, to deal with many details of socket programming. By leaving the socket open, you are able to send additional HTTP requests without all of the overhead of creating/destroying a socket for each transaction. This is extremely helpful, of course, for Web pages that include several images, so the GET requests for those images can be sent on the same connection. Additionally, you can now pipeline your requests; you do not have to wait for a response before issuing your next request. If you simply want to make a single request, receive the response, and have the connection be terminated, go ahead and include the "Connection: Close" header in your HTTP request, and this will request that the Web server close the connection for you. Otherwise, you'll need to do it for yourself. To close the connection yourself, you need to know when the server is finished sending, correct? You do this in two steps: 1) The header portion of the response is terminated by \r\n\r\n (though you should be prepared to accept just \n\n). 2) You read exactly how many bytes were specified in the "Content-Length" header and close the connection when you receive that. That's a basic introduction into the semantics of what you're getting into. If you still need more information, feel free to ask more questions; I enjoy explaining HTTP. Copy me on any responses if you want to ensure that I'll not miss your message. Cheers. Chris -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
