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Asked: 2026-06-02T20:25:16+00:00

For testing purposes I’d like to build a simple HTTP server in PHP. I

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For testing purposes I’d like to build a simple HTTP server in PHP.
I know the HTTP headers are terminated by a \r\n on an empty line and I’d like to detect that pattern so I know when my server has received all the headers and can respond to the client.

Even if I also simulate the client like so:

$in = "HEAD / HTTP/1.1\r\n";
$in .= "Host: www.example.com\r\n";
$in .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
$out = '';

echo "Sending HTTP HEAD request...";
socket_write($socket, $in, strlen($in));

I’m unable to detect the end of the headers. There must be a problem in my thinking logic. Here is my code wich tries to detect the pattern:

do { 
    // read client input 
    $input = socket_read($spawn, 1024, 1) or die("Could not read input\n"); 

    if (preg_match ("/^[\r\n|\r|\n]/", $input)) {
        echo "CRLF detected!!\n";
    } else {
        if (trim($input) != "") { 
            echo "NO CRLF in: ".trim($input)."\n";
        }
    }
} while (true);

I have also tried:

if ($input == "\r\n"){

or 

if (preg_match ("/[\r\n|\r|\n]{2,}/", $input))

and a lot of other different combinations but none of the options seem to detect the \r\n which indicates the end of the headers.
Any help is much appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Thank you Marc B.

    I did not find a solution for this problem.

    The work around I used is:
    – Run a PHP script on your favorite HTTP Server.
    – inspect the $_REQUEST variable and let the script compose a relevant answer using that info
    – Log relevant info/actions to a file.

    This way I’m able to test an App which interacts with a web server. The App connects to my script. I know how the App is interacting with the script by tailing (tail -f) the logfile. The script serves the App with an answer.

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