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 output something similar to: