Description

Allows read-only access to files/resources via HTTP 1.0, using the HTTP GET method. A Host: header is sent with the request to handle name-based virtual hosts. If you have configured a user_agent string using your php.ini file or the stream context, it will also be included in the request.

The stream allows access to the body of the resource; the headers are stored in the $http_response_header variable.

If it's important to know the URL of the resource where your document came from (after all redirects have been processed), you'll need to process the series of response headers returned by the stream.