Programming PHP, 2nd Edition

Name

pfsockopen

Synopsis

int pfsockopen(string host, int port[, int error[, string message
[, double timeout]]])

Opens a persistent TCP or UDP connection to a remote host on a specific port. By default, TCP is used; to connect via UDP, host must begin with udp://. If specified, timeout indicates the length of time in seconds to wait before timing out.

If the connection is successful, the function returns a virtual file pointer that can be used with functions such as fgets( ) and fputs( ). If the connection fails, it returns false. If error and message are supplied, they are set to the error number and error string, respectively.

Unlike fsockopen( ), the socket opened by this function does not close automatically after completing a read or write operation on it; you must close it explicitly with a call to fsclose( ).