How to remove HTTP headers from CURL response?

Question

I have a php script that returns just plain text without any html. Now I want to make a cURL request to that script and I get the following response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:21:51 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12-nmm2
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 6
Content-Type: text/html

6.8320

The actuall response is just 6.8320 as text without any html. I want to retrieve it from the response above by just removing the header information.

I already minified the script a bit:

$url = $_GET['url'];

if ( !$url ) {

  // Passed url not specified.
  $contents = 'ERROR: url not specified';
  $status = array( 'http_code' => 'ERROR' );

} else if ( !preg_match( $valid_url_regex, $url ) ) {

  // Passed url doesn't match $valid_url_regex.
  $contents = 'ERROR: invalid url';
  $status = array( 'http_code' => 'ERROR' );

} else {
  $ch = curl_init( $url );

  if ( strtolower($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']) == 'post' ) {
    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POST, true );
    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $_POST );
  }

  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true );
  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true );
  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );

  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_GET['user_agent'] ? $_GET['user_agent'] : $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] );

  list( $header, $contents ) = preg_split( '/([\r\n][\r\n])\\1/', curl_exec( $ch ), 2 );

  $status = curl_getinfo( $ch );

  curl_close( $ch );
}

// Split header text into an array.
$header_text = preg_split( '/[\r\n]+/', $header );

if ( true ) {
  if ( !$enable_native ) {
    $contents = 'ERROR: invalid mode';
    $status = array( 'http_code' => 'ERROR' );
  }

  // Propagate headers to response.
  foreach ( $header_text as $header ) {
    if ( preg_match( '/^(?:Content-Type|Content-Language|Set-Cookie):/i', $header ) ) {
      header( $header );
    }
  }
  print $contents;
}

Any idea what I need to change to remove the header information from the response?

possible to rephase title to mention it is for PHP, I am searching for command line curl — Larry Cai
– Larry Cai, Commented Nov 21, 2012 at 7:41

j0k · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-17 14:06:05Z

104

Just set CURLOPT_HEADER to false.

edited Aug 17, 2012 at 14:06

j0k

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answered Feb 28, 2011 at 14:06

Ewan Heming

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2 Comments

Luka Over a year ago

Sorry sir, how do you do this if you use CURL get command in ssh?

Gustavo Pinsard Over a year ago

@luka, that would be the -i option or the lack of.

Roeland Werring · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-06 11:16:42Z

60

Make sure you put set the header flag:

        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true );
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, Constants::HTTP_TIMEOUT);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, Constants::HTTP_TIMEOUT);
        $response = curl_exec($ch);

Do this after your curl call:

$header_size = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE);
$headerstring = substr($response, 0, $header_size);
$body = substr($response, $header_size);

EDIT: If you'd like to have header in assoc array, add something like this:

    $headerArr = explode(PHP_EOL, $headerstring);
    foreach ($headerArr as $headerRow) {
        preg_match('/([a-zA-Z\-]+):\s(.+)$/',$headerRow, $matches);
        if (!isset($matches[0])) {
            continue;
        }
        $header[$matches[1]] = $matches[2];
    }

Result print_r($header):

(
    [content-type] => application/json
    [content-length] => 2848
    [date] => Tue, 06 Oct 2020 10:29:33 GMT
    [last-modified] => Tue, 06 Oct 2020 10:17:17 GMT
)

Don't forget to close connection curl_close($ch);

edited Oct 6, 2020 at 11:16

answered Nov 7, 2014 at 18:43

Roeland Werring

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2 Comments

moeiscool Over a year ago

this should be the selected answer. You get to keep the details but not have it appear in the result. Much better than not having them if you actually need them (in my case I needed them).

Matt Kenefick Over a year ago

This should definitely be the selected answer. A lot of people want the headers but just don't want it to be part of the content.

Yaco Zaragoza · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-26 19:16:13Z

6

Update the value of CURLOPT_HEADER to 0 for false

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);

answered Jan 26, 2015 at 19:16

Yaco Zaragoza

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1 Comment

khn Rzk Over a year ago

This is the Perfect Answer !

Medalist · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-25 21:03:28Z

3

Just for a later use if anyone else needs. I was into same situation, but just need to remove header text, not content. The response i was getting in the header was (including white space):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Content-Language: en
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 20:59:29 GMT
Expires: Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Server: nginx
Vary: Cookie, Accept-Language, Accept-Encoding
transfer-encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive

I wanted to remove starting from HTTP till keep-alive with white space:

$contents = preg_replace('/HTTP(.*)alive/s',"",$contents);

that did for me.

answered Feb 25, 2014 at 21:03

Medalist

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1 Comment

bhaveshkac Over a year ago

Quick fix. Thanks

Peon · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-19 07:14:10Z

1

If you are using nuSoap, you can access data without headers with $nsoap->responseData or $nsoap->response, if you want the full headers.

Just in case someone needs that.

answered Oct 19, 2012 at 7:14

Peon

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Comments

superjaz1 · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-27 13:22:22Z

1

If for some reason you have to curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1); to get cookies for example, the following worked for me. Not sure if it's 100% reliable but worth a try

$foo = preg_replace('/HTTP(.*)html/s',"",$curlresult);

edited Nov 27, 2013 at 13:22

answered Nov 27, 2013 at 13:15

superjaz1

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Comments

NoSkill · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-30 10:56:38Z

1

$content = null;

$ch = curl_init();
$rs = curl_exec($ch);

if (CURLE_OK == curl_errno($ch)) {
  $content = substr($rs, curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE));
}

curl_close($ch);

echo $content;

edited Mar 30, 2019 at 10:56

answered Mar 30, 2019 at 10:14

NoSkill

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Comments

Petr Nagy · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-22 18:34:45Z

0

If someone already saved the curl response to a file (like me) and therefore don't know how big the header was to use substr, try:

$file = '/path/to/file/with/headers';
file_put_contents($file, preg_replace('~.*\r\n\r\n~s', '', file_get_contents($file)));

answered Aug 22, 2019 at 18:34

Petr Nagy

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Comments

rik · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-28 14:05:13Z

-1

Just don't set CURLOPT_HEADER!

answered Feb 28, 2011 at 14:05

rik

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4 Comments

DarkLeafyGreen Over a year ago

this removes the whole response

Marc B Over a year ago

Then something else is going on. CURLOPT_HEADER tells CURL to include the header in what's returned from curl_exec. Setting it to false (which is the default anyways) should NOT remove the entire response.

DarkLeafyGreen Over a year ago

strange for me too. setting to false or removing both result in a blank page.

j0k Over a year ago

@RostyslavDzinko if you take the time to look at the accepted answer, you will see that it is the answer and not a comment.

mipe34 · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-13 07:26:10Z

-1

Just do not set the curl_header in the curl request or set it to z or false
like this
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);

edited Feb 13, 2013 at 7:26

mipe34

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answered Feb 13, 2013 at 7:05

Shaibi Rana

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