By slightly modifying one of the examples scripts from PEAR’s HTTP_Client package, you have yourself quite a useful link checker script.

Here’s the code:

http://www.phpkitchen.com/viewableCode/linkchecker.phps

To get things to work:

• install the required classes using the PEAR package manager (if you’re not using this yet slap yourself on the wrist now):

  $ pear install HTTP_Request
  $ pear install HTPP_Client

  If you get an error about missing dependencies, obviously install the dependencies first.

• change the $url variable to one of your sites you want to check (line 81)
• load the script in a browser

The concept is simple:

• Use HTTP_Request to return the html of a given webpage
• use the extractlinks() function (slightly modified from Snoopy code) to get an array of links from the page
• use HTTP_Client and a link checker listener (Observer pattern) to iterate through all the links and return the appropriate response code
• colour code pass/fail responses and update the browser with flush()