# HTTP context options

HTTP context options — HTTP context option listing

### Description

Context options for `http://` and `https://` transports.

### Options

`method` string

  `GET`, `POST`, or any other HTTP method supported by the remote server.

  Defaults to `GET`.

`header` array or string

  Additional headers to be sent during request. Values in this option will override other values (such as `User-agent:`, `Host:`, and `Authentication:`).

`user_agent` string

  Value to send with `User-Agent:` header. This value will only be used if user-agent is not specified in the `header` context option above.

  By default the user_agent php.ini setting is used.

`content` string

  Additional data to be sent after the headers. Typically used with POST or PUT requests.

`proxy` string

  URI specifying address of proxy server. (e.g. `tcp://proxy.example.com:5100`).

`request_fulluri` bool

  When set to `TRUE`, the entire URI will be used when constructing the request. (i.e. `GET http://www.example.com/path/to/file.html HTTP/1.0`). While this is a non-standard request format, some proxy servers require it.

  Defaults to `FALSE`.

`follow_location` int

  Follow `Location` header redirects. Set to `0` to disable.

  Defaults to `1`.

`max_redirects` int

  The max number of redirects to follow. Value `1` or less means that no redirects are followed.

  Defaults to `20`.

`protocol_version` float

  HTTP protocol version.

  Defaults to `1.0`.

`timeout` float

  Read timeout in seconds, specified by a float (e.g. `10.5`).

  By default the default_socket_timeout php.ini setting is used.

`ignore_errors` bool

  Fetch the content even on failure status codes.

  Defaults to `FALSE`.

### Examples

Example #1 Fetch a page and send POST data

`<?php
$postdata = http_build_query(
array(
'var1' => 'some content',
'var2' => 'doh'
)
);
$opts = array('http' =>
array(
'method' => 'POST',
'header' => 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'content' => $postdata
)
);
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$result = file_get_contents('http://example.com/submit.php', false, $context);
?>`

Example #2 Ignore redirects but fetch headers and content

`<?php
$url = "http://www.example.org/header.php";
$opts = array('http' =>
array(
'method' => 'GET',
'max_redirects' => '0',
'ignore_errors' => '1'
)
);
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$stream = fopen($url, 'r', false, $context);
// header information as well as meta data
// about the stream
var_dump(stream_get_meta_data($stream));
// actual data at $url
var_dump(stream_get_contents($stream));
fclose($stream);
?>`

### Notes

> Note: Underlying socket stream context options
> Additional context options may be supported by the underlying transport For `http://` streams, refer to context options for the `tcp://` transport. For `https://` streams, refer to context options for the `ssl://` transport.

> Note: HTTP status line
> When this stream wrapper follows a redirect, the `wrapper_data` returned by stream_get_meta_data() might not necessarily contain the HTTP status line that actually applies to the content data at index `0`.

>     array (
>       'wrapper_data' =>
>       array (
>         0 => 'HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permantenly',
>         1 => 'Cache-Control: no-cache',
>         2 => 'Connection: close',
>         3 => 'Location: http://example.com/foo.jpg',
>         4 => 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK',
>         ...

> The first request returned a `301` (permanent redirect), so the stream wrapper automatically followed the redirect to get a `200` response (index = `4`).

### See Also

- http://
- Socket context options
- SSL context options