Minecraft Server List Properties Example A concise, over-commented, efficiently-coded example for pinging a Minecraft server and retrieving its status. No error checking.

check.php

<?php
function pingMCServer($server,$port=25565,$timeout=2){
	$socket=socket_create(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,getprotobyname('tcp')); // set up socket holder
	socket_connect($socket,$server,$port); // connect to minecraft server on port 25565
	socket_send($socket,chr(254).chr(1),2,null); // send 0xFE 01 -- tells the server we want pinglist info
	socket_recv($socket,$buf,3,null); // first 3 bytes indicate the len of the reply. not necessary but i'm not one for hacky socket read loops
	$buf=substr($buf,1,2); // always pads it with 0xFF to indicate an EOF message
	$len=unpack('n',$buf); // gives us 1/2 the length of the reply
	socket_recv($socket,$buf,$len[1]*2,null); // read $len*2 bytes and hang u[
	$data=explode(chr(0).chr(0),$buf); // explode on nul-dubs
	array_shift($data); // remove separator char
	return $data; // boom sucka
}

Much better than the older ping

Encoding of the final strings seemed to be off (e.g. at version it said 1.6.4 but the strlen was 10) I've managed to get it to work properly by changing up the encoding of buf. It looked alright, but once you try to draw the strings with gd you'll get what I mean by it seeming off . It might be a hack but it works for me.

socket_recv($socket,$buf,$len[1]*2,null); // read $len*2 bytes and hang up
$buf = mb_convert_encoding($buf, "auto", "UTF-16BE"); //convert to encoding php can deal with
$data=explode(chr(0),$buf); // explode on nul-dubs

How would this look for the new protocol, handshake etc in 1.7?
I would give my right arm for an updated version ;)

@Goatti
1.7 version:
https://gist.github.com/Mast3rPlan/7647029

$timeout is never used?