Ping A Page, Reddirect if Not Available

**Gordon Burditt** · Jul 17 '05, 12:38 PM

Re: Ping A Page, Reddirect if Not Available

>My organization's web page is on a server which has php. A work request[color=blue]
>web server is on a separate server which I take down frequently for
>maintenance, upgrades and tweaking. What I'm trying to do is create a
>page, which will be the link to the work request service, that will
>first ping the work request server. If the work request service is
>active, it will go to it. If it is down, it will redirect to another page.[/color]

"ping", assuming you mean that literally (ICMP packets), will not
tell you if the web server is up and able to serve pages. For
example, a web server may ping nicely while it is spending 15 minutes
running fsck cleaning its filesystems after a crashed caused by CPU
overheating due to fan failure, and the web server is not running
during this time.

[color=blue]
>Is there anywhere on the web which might have sample code for this sort
>of thing? All of the suggestions I have be other knowledgeable
>colleagues as well as google searches I have done so far either point to
> VB scripting/ASP
>(http://www.forum4designers.com/archi...-4-209035.html, for
>example) or deal with PHP issues that don't seem to address my needs. My
>coding knowledge of PHP is non-existent and my html skills are
>rudimentary and I don't know anything about how to ping a server. As I
>mentioned at the beginning, I'm kind of on my own due to a deadline.[/color]

It appears what you may want is requesting a page from the remote
server with a timeout, so if it's down, you find out about it (sorta
quickly). Consider looking at the example code on the stream_set_time out()
function page on www.php.net, which uses fsockopen() and
stream_set_time out().

Gordon L. Burditt

**Chung Leong** · Jul 17 '05, 12:39 PM

Re: Ping A Page, Reddirect if Not Available

"Tim Marshall" <TIMMY!@PurpleP andaChasers.Moe rtherium> wrote in message
news:d3m512$695 $1@coranto.ucs. mun.ca...[color=blue]
> Originally posted with Comp.lang.php spelt stupidly incorrectly. Please
> accept my apologies for the resultant multi-post....
>
> Hi, I'm cross posting to comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html and
> comp.languages. php. Our IT staff who usually do this sort of thing are
> rather busy and I am desperately looking at an impending deadline.
>
> My organization's web page is on a server which has php. A work request
> web server is on a separate server which I take down frequently for
> maintenance, upgrades and tweaking. What I'm trying to do is create a
> page, which will be the link to the work request service, that will
> first ping the work request server. If the work request service is
> active, it will go to it. If it is down, it will redirect to another[/color]
page.[color=blue]
>
> Is there anywhere on the web which might have sample code for this sort
> of thing? All of the suggestions I have be other knowledgeable
> colleagues as well as google searches I have done so far either point to
> VB scripting/ASP
> (http://www.forum4designers.com/archi...-4-209035.html, for
> example) or deal with PHP issues that don't seem to address my needs. My
> coding knowledge of PHP is non-existent and my html skills are
> rudimentary and I don't know anything about how to ping a server. As I
> mentioned at the beginning, I'm kind of on my own due to a deadline.
>
> Thanks very much in advance for any leads on this.
> --
> Tim http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/
> ^o<
> /#) "Burp-beep, burp-beep, burp-beep?" - Quaker Jake
> /^^ "Whatcha doin?" - Ditto "TIM-MAY!!" - Me[/color]

In PHP this is super-easy, because HTTP retrieval is an intergral part of
the file-handling mechanism. Something like this will do the job:

<?php

if(fopen("http://www.workrequest .com/", "rb")) {
header("Locatio n: http://www.workrequest .com/");
}
else {
header("Locatio n: /sitedown.php");
}

?>

**Guest** · Jul 17 '05, 12:40 PM

Re: Ping A Page, Reddirect if Not Available

> Is there anywhere on the web which might have sample code for this sort[color=blue]
> of thing? All of the suggestions I have be other knowledgeable[/color]

Sample code will be found using PHP's fsockopen function:

http://us4.php.net/fsockopen

Although this is not tested, you could do something like:

<?php
$fp = @fopen("http://www.yahoo.com/NotFound", "r");
if (!$fp) {
// Go Here Instead
header("Locatio n: http://www.example.com/");
exit;
} else {
fclose($fp);
header("Locatio n: http://www.yahoo.com/NotFound");
exit;
}
?>

The above would be it's own php page such as PageFinder.php.
You would link to this php page, and allow it to figure out where to direct
the visitor.

--
-Wil Moore III, MCP

https://www.digitallysmooth.com

**Tim Marshall** · Jul 17 '05, 12:42 PM

Re: Ping A Page, Reddirect if Not Available

Gordon Burditt wrote:
[color=blue]
> It appears what you may want is requesting a page from the remote[/color]

Will, Chung and Gordan, thanks very much for your prompt replies. I'm
still trying to sort these suggestions, sites and code out, but will
figure this out.

I really appreciate the starting points provided.
--
Tim http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/
^o<
/#) "Burp-beep, burp-beep, burp-beep?" - Quaker Jake
/^^ "Whatcha doin?" - Ditto "TIM-MAY!!" - Me

Ping A Page, Reddirect if Not Available

Ping A Page, Reddirect if Not Available

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