stream_socket_client

(PHP 5, PHP 7)

stream_socket_client — Open Internet or Unix domain socket connection

Description

resource stream_socket_client ( string $remote_socket [, int &$errno [, string &$errstr [, float $timeout = ini_get("default_socket_timeout") [, int $flags = STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT [, resource $context ]]]]] )

Initiates a stream or datagram connection to the destination specified by remote_socket. The type of socket created is determined by the transport specified using standard URL formatting: transport://target. For Internet Domain sockets (AF_INET) such as TCP and UDP, the target portion of the remote_socket parameter should consist of a hostname or IP address followed by a colon and a port number. For Unix domain sockets, the target portion should point to the socket file on the filesystem.

Note:
The stream will by default be opened in blocking mode. You can switch it to non-blocking mode by using stream_set_blocking().

Parameters

remote_socket

Address to the socket to connect to.

errno

Will be set to the system level error number if connection fails.

errstr

Will be set to the system level error message if the connection fails.

timeout

Number of seconds until the connect() system call should timeout.

Note: This parameter only applies when not making asynchronous connection attempts.

Note:
To set a timeout for reading/writing data over the socket, use the stream_set_timeout(), as the timeout only applies while making connecting the socket.

flags

Bitmask field which may be set to any combination of connection flags. Currently the select of connection flags is limited to STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT (default), STREAM_CLIENT_ASYNC_CONNECT and STREAM_CLIENT_PERSISTENT.

context

A valid context resource created with stream_context_create().

Return Values

On success a stream resource is returned which may be used together with the other file functions (such as fgets(), fgetss(), fwrite(), fclose(), and feof()), FALSE on failure.

Errors/Exceptions

On failure the errno and errstr arguments will be populated with the actual system level error that occurred in the system-level connect() call. If the value returned in errno is 0 and the function returned FALSE, it is an indication that the error occurred before the connect() call. This is most likely due to a problem initializing the socket. Note that the errno and errstr arguments will always be passed by reference.

Examples

Example #1 stream_socket_client() example


<?php
$fp = stream_socket_client("tcp://www.example.com:80", $errno, $errstr, 30);
if (!$fp) {
    echo "$errstr ($errno)<br />\n";
} else {
    fwrite($fp, "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: www.example.com\r\nAccept: */*\r\n\r\n");
    while (!feof($fp)) {
        echo fgets($fp, 1024);
    }
    fclose($fp);
}
?>

Example #2 Using UDP connection

Retrieving the day and time from the UDP service "daytime" (port 13) on localhost.


<?php
$fp = stream_socket_client("udp://127.0.0.1:13", $errno, $errstr);
if (!$fp) {
    echo "ERROR: $errno - $errstr<br />\n";
} else {
    fwrite($fp, "\n");
    echo fread($fp, 26);
    fclose($fp);
}
?>

Notes

Warning

UDP sockets will sometimes appear to have opened without an error, even if the remote host is unreachable. The error will only become apparent when you read or write data to/from the socket. The reason for this is because UDP is a "connectionless" protocol, which means that the operating system does not try to establish a link for the socket until it actually needs to send or receive data.

Note: When specifying a numerical IPv6 address (e.g. fe80::1), you must enclose the IP in square brackets—for example, tcp://[fe80::1]:80.

Note:
Depending on the environment, the Unix domain or the optional connect timeout may not be available. A list of available transports can be retrieved using stream_get_transports(). See List of Supported Socket Transports for a list of built in transports.

User Contributed Notes

nicholas at nicholaswilliams dot net

7 years ago


For those wanting to use stream_socket_client() to connect to a local UNIX socket who can't find documentation on how to do it, here's a (rough) example:

<?php

$sock = stream_socket_client('unix:///full/path/to/my/socket.sock', $errno, $errstr);

fwrite($sock, 'SOME COMMAND'."\r\n");

echo fread($sock, 4096)."\n";

fclose($sock);

?>

Vasil Rangelov a.k.a. boen_robot

4 years ago


The remote_socket argument, in its end (well... after the port), can also contain a "/" followed by a unique identifier. This is especially useful if you want to create multiple persistent connections to the same transport://host:port combo.

Example:
<?php
$socket = stream_socket_client('tcp://mysql.example.com:3306/root', $errorno, $errorstr, $timeout, STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT | STREAM_CLIENT_PERSISTENT);
?>

Note that while (p)fsockopen() follows a similar scheme, it doesn't have this particular feature.

wbeaver at afilias dot info

8 years ago


# Some may find it useful to know that your caCert 
# must be in pem format, and that PHP seems to like 
# your key, cert, and cacert pem's to be concatenated
# in a single file (I suffered various "unknown chain" 
# errors, otherwise)
#
# So, (linux users), concat your components as follows:
# (where current working dir is dir where 
# cert components are stored)
#
# cat key.pem >certchain.pem
# cat cert.pem >>certchain.pem
# cat cacert.pem >>certchain.pem
#
# Then, the php....
##################################

<?php

$host = 'host.domain.tld';
$port = 1234;
$timeout = 10;

$cert = '/path/to/your/certchain/certchain.pem';
$context = stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('local_cert'=> $cert,
)));

if ($fp = stream_socket_client('ssl://'.$host.':'.$port, $errno, $errstr, 30,
        STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT, $context)) {
    fwrite($fp, "\n");
    echo fread($fp,8192);
    fclose($fp);
} else {
   echo "ERROR: $errno - $errstr<br />\n";
}

?>

bisho at onirica dot com

6 years ago


stream_socket_client is much easier and faster to use to direct sockets, because you can use directly fwrite / fget / fclose functions, but I find hard to find how to connect to a UNIX domain socket. The URL to use is "udg:///path/to/socket".

For example, to log to the log socket (like syslog), you can use:

<?php
$socket = stream_socket_client('udg:///dev/log',
        $errorno,
        $errorstr,
        $timeout);
fwrite($socket, ...);
?>

Daniel

1 year ago


If you only need to check a stream for data, you can use stream_get_content and strtr function. stream_get_content  
reads the remainder of a stream into a string.  
<?php

$addr = gethostbyname('www.example.com');

$client = stream_socket_client("tcp://$addr:80", $errno, $errorMessage);

 if($client === false){
                throw new UnexpectedValueException("Failed to connect: $errorMessage");
        }
        
        fwrite($client, "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\nhost:    'www.example.com'\r\nAccept: */*\r\n\r\n");
       
$variable = stream_get_content($client);

if(strstr($variable,'data your looking for'))
       echo "The data you are looking for is here";
else
       echo "data not found";

fclose($client);
?>

robin at gareus dot org