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
}

$timeout is never used?