PHP Manual
Socket Functions
Receives data from a connected socket

socket_recv

(PHP 4 >= 4.1.0, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

socket_recv — Receives data from a connected socket

Description

socket_recv(
    Socket $socket,
    ?string &$data,
    int $length,
    int $flags
): int|false

The socket_recv() function receives length bytes of data in data from socket. socket_recv() can be used to gather data from connected sockets. Additionally, one or more flags can be specified to modify the behaviour of the function.

data is passed by reference, so it must be specified as a variable in the argument list. Data read from socket by socket_recv() will be returned in data.

Parameters

socket

The socket must be a Socket instance previously created by socket_create().

data

The data received will be fetched to the variable specified with data. If an error occurs, if the connection is reset, or if no data is available, data will be set to null.

length

Up to length bytes will be fetched from remote host.

flags

The value of flags can be any combination of the following flags, joined with the binary OR (|) operator.

**Possible values for `flags`**
Flag	Description
`MSG_OOB`	Process out-of-band data.
`MSG_PEEK`	Receive data from the beginning of the receive queue without removing it from the queue.
`MSG_WAITALL`	Block until at least `length` are received. However, if a signal is caught or the remote host disconnects, the function may return less data.
`MSG_DONTWAIT`	With this flag set, the function returns even if it would normally have blocked.

Return Values

socket_recv() returns the number of bytes received, or false if there was an error. The actual error code can be retrieved by calling socket_last_error(). This error code may be passed to socket_strerror() to get a textual explanation of the error.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.0.0	`socket` is a Socket instance now; previously, it was a resource.

Examples

Example #1 socket_recv() example

This example is a simple rewrite of the first example from Examples to use socket_recv().


<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

echo "<h2>TCP/IP Connection</h2>\n";

/* Get the port for the WWW service. */
$service_port = getservbyname('www', 'tcp');

/* Get the IP address for the target host. */
$address = gethostbyname('www.example.com');

/* Create a TCP/IP socket. */
$socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP);
if ($socket === false) {
    echo "socket_create() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror(socket_last_error()) . "\n";
} else {
    echo "OK.\n";
}

echo "Attempting to connect to '$address' on port '$service_port'...";
$result = socket_connect($socket, $address, $service_port);
if ($result === false) {
    echo "socket_connect() failed.\nReason: ($result) " . socket_strerror(socket_last_error($socket)) . "\n";
} else {
    echo "OK.\n";
}

$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));
echo "OK.\n";

echo "Reading response:\n\n";
$buf = 'This is my buffer.';
if (false !== ($bytes = socket_recv($socket, $buf, 2048, MSG_WAITALL))) {
    echo "Read $bytes bytes from socket_recv(). Closing socket...";
} else {
    echo "socket_recv() failed; reason: " . socket_strerror(socket_last_error($socket)) . "\n";
}
socket_close($socket);

echo $buf . "\n";
echo "OK.\n\n";
?>

The above example will produce something like:

<h2>TCP/IP Connection</h2>
OK.
Attempting to connect to '208.77.188.166' on port '80'...OK.
Sending HTTP HEAD request...OK.
Reading response:

Read 123 bytes from socket_recv(). Closing socket...HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:56:36 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)
Last-Modified: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:24:10 GMT
ETag: "b80f4-1b6-80bfd280"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 438
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

OK.