get http status code

[eposjk]

How do I check if the scraped page is an error page?
It would be helpful to have the http status for that - something like

$web->go('https://httpstat.us/404');
echo $web->status;     // prints 404

Just before posting, I found the solution myself:

$web->client->getResponse()->getStatusCode()

It would be great to have this added to the documentation.
Or maybe add $web->status as shortcut?

[eposjk]

Thanks!

Concerning your idea:
doesn't $web->is404 and others lead to bad (unsafe) code which just checks specific codes?
better would be

if($web->isSuccess) {     // or $web->isOk ? or $web->is2xx ?
     // process data (was 200 OK or other 2xx)
} elseif($web->isServerError) {     // or $web->is5xx ?
     // repeat request later (was 500 Internal Server Error, 503 Service Unavailable, 504 Gateway Timeout or other 5xx)
} else {     // we might offer something like $web->isClientError or $web->is4xx - but the user should not forget to handle all error codes!
     // bad url (was 404 Not Found, 410 Gone, 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons or other 4xx or unknown status codes)
}

[spekulatius]

Oh, sorry, I've removed it as I realized I need to think it through more and play with some code. Your idea with grouping it as is2xx, is4xx, is5xx is solving a question I've had: how to make an organized decision based on it. I'll open a PR to have something to talk about it shortly

[spekulatius]

I've add some ideas for status code related methods: #162

Let me know what you think @eposjk :)

[eposjk]

Well - technically it works, but does it really make sense to add different functions which do the same? In addition, there isn't an is(NumericStatusCode) function for every common status code. So it gets confusing - the developer has to know that he could use isNotFound/is404 but not isGone/is410.

My personal opinion would be to only keep the is2xx/is4xx/is5xx (and maybe is3xx - if there is a way not to auto-follow redirects) - maybe renaming them to isSuccess(2xx)/isServerError(5xx)/isClientError(4xx) - who really needs to check for specific codes and knows what he's doing should do that with e.g. $web->statusCode===404

By the way: The way to check if any error occured would be !$web->isSuccess - just $web->isServerError || $web->isClientError is NOT enought! Web crawlers should be able to deal even with exotic HTTP status codes and treat them as errors (e.g. 9xx).

[spekulatius]

Well - technically it works, but does it really make sense to add different functions which do the same? In addition, there isn't an is(NumericStatusCode) function for every common status code. So it gets confusing - the developer has to know that he could use isNotFound/is404 but not isGone/is410.

Yeah, my first thought was to allow flexibility. But for keeping the interface simple falling back on a simple === check sounds good. I'll adjust it shortly.

My personal opinion would be to only keep the is2xx/is4xx/is5xx (and maybe is3xx - if there is a way not to auto-follow redirects) - maybe renaming them to isSuccess(2xx)/isServerError(5xx)/isClientError(4xx) - who really needs to check for specific codes and knows what he's doing should do that with e.g. $web->statusCode===404

Yeah, this would allow to break it down into categories for internal handling. As you've mentioned, detailed handling can be done on the statusCode itself.

By the way: The way to check if any error occured would be !$web->isSuccess - just $web->isServerError || $web->isClientError is NOT enought! Web crawlers should be able to deal even with exotic HTTP status codes and treat them as errors (e.g. 9xx).

The 600+ ranges seem to be used for various purposes atm. Some are caching-related and others are errors. What are you thinking how these should be handled?

[eposjk]

Its more complicated than I thought - I gave it a try: https://github.com/eposjk/PHPScraper/tree/status-codes

New insights:

• the action depends not only on the status code, but also on the chain of redirects leading to this page (its a huge difference if you have just a 410 Gone status or a temporary redirect leading to a 410 Gone page) - I solved that by adding helper functions to detect if there has been a temporary redirect $web->usesTemporaryRedirect or if the whole result is only temporary $web->isTemporaryResult
• error status codes should not primary distinguished by if they are client (4xx) or server (5xx) errors, but if they are permanent or temporary errors ($web->isTemporaryResult contains a detailed list of temporary ones)
• everything what is not a successful result and not a temporary one is probably a permanent error - but hey: some might occur because of administrative actions on the web server - so it would be a good practice to consider those errors (e.g. 404) as permanent after trying multiple times
• the only status code i would really consider permanent is 410 Gone - where we can assume it isn't sent accidentally (that's why I created $web->isGone - which also checks if there were no temporary redirects)
• By the way, I also collect retry timing hints from the Retry-After headers. $web->retryAt
• Furthermore it should be possible to detect if there is a permanent redirect which should be used for future requests $web->permanentRedirectUrl
• I would handle the 600+ errors like any unknown error as probably permanent.

see some demo code at https://github.com/eposjk/PHPScraper/blob/status-codes/demo.php

In addition, I would remove isClientError(), isServerError(), isNotFound() and isForbidden().
(At least isNotFound() I consider as harmful - people probably will use it to check if a page is intentional unavailable. They probably will forget to check for other status codes which also might be used for intentional unavailable content - 410 Gone, 401 Unauthorized and 403 Forbidden)

What is still missing:

• test cases
• helper function/example code to detect when a probably permanent error is really a permanent one (-> a database driven webcrawler example)

[spekulatius]

Hey @eposjk

I've open a PR for this: #164. Let's work out some practical details with this.

Cheers,
Peter