(PHP 4 >= 4.1.0, PHP 5)
socket_recv — Receives data from a connected socket
$socket
   , string &$buf
   , int $len
   , int $flags
   )
   The socket_recv() function receives
   len bytes of data in buf 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.
  
   buf 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 buf.
  
socket
       The socket must be a socket resource previously
       created by socket_create().
      
buf
       The data received will be fetched to the variable specified with
       buf. If an error occurs, if the
       connection is reset, or if no data is
       available, buf will be set to NULL.
      
len
       Up to len 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.
      
| 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 lenare 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. | 
   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.
  
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.