php-ping

PPPing, the Purplepixie PHP Ping Library is a low-level socket based ICMP ping library written by David Cutting for use within the FreeNATS Network Monitor but now spun out as a standalone library.

Obtaining PPPing

The easiest option is to use composer to be able to obtain the latest package via Packagist with the command:

composer require purplepixie/php-ping

Using composer you can then autoload the classes as needed.

You can also download the source directly (from a tagged release or clone the repo) and include the file src/PurplePixie/PhpPing/PPPing.php.

Note the PPPing class is in the namespace \PurplePixie\PhpPing\PPPing.

Using PPPing

Once included it's very simple to use PPPing.

use \PurplePixie\PhpPing\PPPing;
$ping = new PPPing(); // instantiate a PPPing object
$ping->setHostname("www.google.com"); // host to ping (hostname or IP)
$result=$ping->Ping(); // perform a single ICMP ping
// Result is either a negative number (error) or 0 up which is return in ms
if ($result<0) // error
    echo "Error: ".$ping->strError($result)."\n";
else
    echo "Return: ".$result." ms\n";

Additional Information Available

Following a ping information about the last result is available via PPPing::getLast() which is an associative array with keys as follows:

• set - boolean indicating if data was returned or not
• result - the result value of the ping (negative number means error, 0 or positive is return time in ms)
• ttl - the TTL of the returned packet
• hops - an estimation of the hops based on socket TTL and returned TTL (not always accurate)
• source - IP address of the return packet source (the remote system)
• destination - IP address of the destination of the return packet (local system)

Other Options and Variables

Various options can be read and set as needed within the PPPing object

• PPPing::getHostname() gets the remote hostname or IP
• PPPing::setHostname($host) sets the remote hostname or IP
• PPPing::getTTL() gets the TTL
• PPPing::setTTL($ttl) sets the TTL
• PPPing::getTimeout() gets the Timeout (seconds)
• PPPing::setTimeout($timeout) sets the Timeout (seconds)
• PPPing::getPackage() gets the packet package (defaults to "PPPing")
• PPPing::setPackage($package) sets the packet package
• PPPing::getDebug() gets the debug status flag (boolean)
• PPPing::setDebug($d) sets the debug status flag (boolean)
• PPPing::getSequence() gets the sequence
• PPPing::setSequence($s) sets the sequence
• PPPing::getIdentity() gets the identity used
• PPPing::getLast() gets the data about the last ping

Example CLI Implementation

In the bin folder is a ping.php which can be run on the command-line to demonstrate the functionality of PPPing. Options to the ping.php script are:

Usage: php ping.php [options] hostname

Options available are as follows:

 --ttl x | -t x    Set TTL (not working with ppping yet)
 --debug | -d      Turn on debug mode and output
 --delay x         Minimum delay between pings in seconds (or decimal)
 --help | -h       Display this help and quit
 --count x | -c x  Number of times to ping (default infinity)

hostname must be a resolvable host or an IP address to ping (required)