Question

I’m using get_meta_tags() in a script and on certain URLs it fails out with (as an example)…

Warning: get_meta_tags(http://www.kodak.com/) [function.get-meta-tags]: failed to open stream: Redirection limit reached…

Is it possible to just skip over any result that throws an error? Or should I just use @get_meta_tags() instead?

function getMeta()
{
    $tags = get_meta_tags($this->link); //INSERT INTEGRITY CHECK HERE?
    $keywords = $tags['keywords']; 

    if(count($keywords))
    {
        preg_match_all('/(?<=^|,)\s*((?:[^\s,]+\s*){1,4})(?=\s*(?:,|$))/', $keywords, $m);
        $this->keywords = array_slice($m[1], 0, 15);
    }
}

Answer 1

You could use the error suppression operator – the @ character – directly before the call to get_meta_tags(). This has the effect of turning all error reporting off for that line only, but it’s generally regarded as a bad practice, only to be used when you other options are all exhausted.

Your first reaction to this should be to try to pass a canonical URL to get_meta_tags() where possible – i.e. you should try to pass the URL at the end of the redirection chain: for example, link to http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php rather than http://php.net/array. If $this-link comes from a source out of your control, however, using error suppression might be your best bet:

You can use it as follows:

$tags = @get_meta_tags($this->link);

This is functionally the same as this:

$errorLevel = error_reporting(0);
$tags = get_meta_tags($this->link);
error_reporting($errorLevel);

You’ll need to change the rest of your code to deal with the $tags variable not containing an array of meta tags.