PHP: Get headers with actual HEAD request

PHP has a function called get_headers which, as you'd guess, gives you the headers returned from an HTTP request. However it actually uses a GET, rather than a HEAD, request.

Figured out you can change this by setting a stream context, so I wrapped it in a function and posting it here in case I need it again.

Also added a cleanup of the returned array, as I found it a bit ugly and hard to deal with when the request included redirects.

function get_head(string $url, array $opts = [])
{
    // Store previous default context
    $prev = stream_context_get_options(stream_context_get_default());

    // Set new one with head and a small timeout
    stream_context_set_default(['http' => $opts +
        [
            'method' => 'HEAD',
            'timeout' => 2,
        ]]);

    // Do the head request
    $req = @get_headers($url, true);
    if( ! $req)
        return false;

    // Cleanup the response to make it easier to deal with
    foreach($req as $h => $v)
    {
        if(is_int($h))
            $headers[$h]['Status'] = $v;
        else
        {
            if(is_string($v))
                $headers[0][$h] = $v;
            else
                foreach($v as $x => $y)
                    $headers[$x][$h] = $y;
        }

    }

    // Restore previous default context and return
    stream_context_set_default($prev);
    return $headers;
}

Example response

<?php get_head('http://geekality.net');

array (size=2)
  0 =>
    array (size=8)
      'Status' => string 'HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently' (length=30)
      'Date' => string 'Mon, 06 Feb 2017 01:20:48 GMT' (length=29)
      'Server' => string 'Apache' (length=6)
      'Location' => string 'http://www.geekality.net/' (length=25)
      'Vary' => string 'Accept-Encoding' (length=15)
      'Connection' => string 'close' (length=5)
      'Content-Type' => string 'text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' (length=29)
      'Link' => string '<http://www.geekality.net/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"' (length=61)
  1 =>
    array (size=6)
      'Date' => string 'Mon, 06 Feb 2017 01:20:48 GMT' (length=29)
      'Server' => string 'Apache' (length=6)
      'Vary' => string 'Accept-Encoding' (length=15)
      'Connection' => string 'close' (length=5)
      'Content-Type' => string 'text/html; charset=UTF-8' (length=24)
      'Status' => string 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK' (length=15)

The following is an example of what you'd get without the cleanup:

<?php get_head('http://geekality.net');

array (size=9)
  0 => string 'HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently' (length=30)
  'Date' =>
    array (size=2)
      0 => string 'Mon, 06 Feb 2017 01:14:00 GMT' (length=29)
      1 => string 'Mon, 06 Feb 2017 01:14:01 GMT' (length=29)
  'Server' =>
    array (size=2)
      0 => string 'Apache' (length=6)
      1 => string 'Apache' (length=6)
  'Location' => string 'http://www.geekality.net/' (length=25)
  'Vary' =>
    array (size=2)
      0 => string 'Accept-Encoding' (length=15)
      1 => string 'Accept-Encoding' (length=15)
  'Connection' =>
    array (size=2)
      0 => string 'close' (length=5)
      1 => string 'close' (length=5)
  'Content-Type' =>
    array (size=2)
      0 => string 'text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' (length=29)
      1 => string 'text/html; charset=UTF-8' (length=24)
  1 => string 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK' (length=15)
  'Link' => string '<http://www.geekality.net/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"' (length=61)