php.net |  support |  documentation |  report a bug |  advanced search |  search howto |  statistics |  random bug |  login

go to bug id or search bugs for

Bug #58300 http_get returns an empty string upon timeout, not false
Submitted: 2008-08-05 08:49 UTC Modified: 2008-12-05 12:00 UTC
From: alangland at andyl56 dot com Assigned: mike (profile)
Status: Not a bug Package: pecl_http (PECL)
PHP Version: 5_3 CVS-2008-08-05 (dev) OS: Windows XP + 2003 Server
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
View Developer Edit
 [2008-08-05 08:49 UTC] alangland at andyl56 dot com 
Description:
------------
http_get is supposed to return false on connection timeout, but instead it returns an empty string.

Library version according to php.exe --re http:


http version 1.6.1-dev

Reproduce code:
---------------
if (false === ($http = http_get('http://0.0.0.0/', array('timeout' =>
15, 'connecttimeout' => 15)))) {
  echo 'FALSE returned';
}
else {
  var_dump($http);
}

Expected result:
----------------
FALSE returned

Actual result:
--------------
string(0) ""

Patches

Pull Requests

History

AllCommentsChangesGit/SVN commitsRelated reports
 [2008-12-05 04:56 UTC] mike@php.net 
Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug.

FALSE is only returned on "hard" failures like parsing parameters or building the request.  As soon as it comes to execute the request the return value will be the response, i.e. on any serious connect/transfer failure an empty string resp. a partially received response.

Thanks.
 [2008-12-05 12:00 UTC] alangland at andyl56 dot com 
Thanks for your response. If this is the intended behavior, would you please document this in the official manual so developers are at least aware of it?
 [2010-01-15 18:22 UTC] david dot h at highgearmedia dot com 
How then can I detect a timeout? Should I compare total_time to my timeout value? Is this guaranteed to be > on timeout and <= on completion? Do I need to examine the error string?
 
PHP Copyright © 2001-2025 The PHP Group
All rights reserved. 		Last updated: Tue Jul 01 18:01:35 2025 UTC