load() Function for PHP - Fetch URL Content

I recently had to develop a small script that will fetch an XML file from the web. All I had to do is download a given URL and read its contents. To my great surprise I found that download the file using my jx Ajax library was much easier than doing it with PHP.

PHP make this very easy by including functions like file_get_contents() that has URL support. This code will get you the contents of an URL.

$contents = file_get_contents('http://example.com/rss.xml');

Unfortunately, this is a huge security threat - and many servers have disabled this feature in PHP. Also this is not the most optimized method to fetch an URL. Also, it is impossible to submit data using the POST method using this function.

Other Options - curl and fsockopen

PHP provide other two method to fetch an URL - Curl and Fsockopen . But to use this I have to write a lot more code.

load()

So I decided to create my own function that makes it much more easier.

Features

• Easy to use.
• Supports Get and Post methods.
• Supports HTTP Basic Authentication - this will work - http://binny:password@example.com/
• Supports both Curl and Fsockopen. Tries to use curl - if it is not available, users fsockopen.
• Secure URL(https) supported with Curl

Options

The first argument of this function is the URL to be fetched. The second argument is an associative array. This is an optional argument. The following values are supported in this array.

return_info

Possible values - true/false
If this is true, the function will return an associative array rather than just a string. The array will contain 3 elements...

headers

An associative array containing all the headers returned by the server.

body

A string - the contents of the URL.

info

Some information about the fetch. This is the result returned by the 'curl_getinfo()' function. Supported only with Curl.

method

Possible Values - post/get
Specifies the method to be used.

modified_since

If this option is set, the 'If-Modified-Since' header will be used. This will make sure that the URL will be fetched only it was modified.

Examples

The code to fetch the contents of an URL will look like this...

$contents = load('http://example.com/rss.xml');

Simple, no? This will just return the contents of the URL. If you need to do more complex stuff, just use the second argument to pass more options...

$options = array(
	'return_info'	=> true,
	'method'		=> 'post'
);
$result = load('http://www.bin-co.com/rss.xml.php?section=2',$options);
print_r($result);


 

The output will be like this...

Array
(
    [headers] => Array
        (
            [Date] => Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:56:22 GMT
            [Server] => Apache/2.0.54 (Unix) PHP/4.4.7 mod_ssl/2.0.54 OpenSSL/0.9.7e mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2
            [X-Powered-By] => PHP/5.2.2
            [Expires] => Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
            [Cache-Control] => no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
            [Pragma] => no-cache
            [Set-Cookie] => PHPSESSID=85g9n1i320ao08kp5tmmneohm1; path=/
            [Last-Modified] => Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 GMT
            [Vary] => Accept-Encoding
            [Transfer-Encoding] => chunked
            [Content-Type] => text/xml
        )
	[body] => ... Contents of the Page ...
	[info] => Array
        (
            [url] => http://www.bin-co.com/rss.xml.php?section=2
            [content_type] => text/xml
            [http_code] => 200
            [header_size] => 501
            [request_size] => 146
            [filetime] => -1
            [ssl_verify_result] => 0
            [redirect_count] => 0
            [total_time] => 1.113792
            [namelookup_time] => 0.180019
            [connect_time] => 0.467973
            [pretransfer_time] => 0.468035
            [size_upload] => 0
            [size_download] => 2274
            [speed_download] => 2041
            [speed_upload] => 0
            [download_content_length] => 0
            [upload_content_length] => 0
            [starttransfer_time] => 0.826031
            [redirect_time] => 0
        )
)


 

Code

<?php /** * See http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/load/ * Version : 2.00.A */ function load($url,$options=array()) { $default_options = array( 'method' => 'get', 'return_info' => false, 'return_body' => true, 'cache' => false, 'referer' => '', 'headers' => array(), 'session' => false, 'session_close' => false, ); // Sets the default options. foreach($default_options as $opt=>$value) { if(!isset($options[$opt])) $options[$opt] = $value; } $url_parts = parse_url($url); $ch = false; $info = array(//Currently only supported by curl. 'http_code' => 200 ); $response = ''; $send_header = array( 'Accept' => 'text/*', 'User-Agent' => 'BinGet/1.00.A (http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/load/)' ) + $options['headers']; // Add custom headers provided by the user. if($options['cache']) { $cache_folder = '/tmp/php-load-function/'; if(isset($options['cache_folder'])) $cache_folder = $options['cache_folder']; if(!file_exists($cache_folder)) { $old_umask = umask(0); // Or the folder will not get write permission for everybody. mkdir($cache_folder, 0777); umask($old_umask); } $cache_file_name = md5($url) . '.cache'; $cache_file = joinPath($cache_folder, $cache_file_name); //Don't change the variable name - used at the end of the function. if(file_exists($cache_file)) { // Cached file exists - return that. $response = file_get_contents($cache_file); //Seperate header and content $separator_position = strpos($response,"/r/n/r/n"); $header_text = substr($response,0,$separator_position); $body = substr($response,$separator_position+4); foreach(explode("/n",$header_text) as $line) { $parts = explode(": ",$line); if(count($parts) == 2) $headers[$parts[0]] = chop($parts[1]); } $headers['cached'] = true; if(!$options['return_info']) return $body; else return array('headers' => $headers, 'body' => $body, 'info' => array('cached'=>true)); } } / Curl / //If curl is available, use curl to get the data. if(function_exists("curl_init") and (!(isset($options['use']) and $options['use'] == 'fsocketopen'))) { //Don't use curl if it is specifically stated to use fsocketopen in the options if(isset($options['post_data'])) { //There is an option to specify some data to be posted. $page = $url; $options['method'] = 'post'; if(is_array($options['post_data'])) { //The data is in array format. $post_data = array(); foreach($options['post_data'] as $key=>$value) { $post_data[] = "$key=" . urlencode($value); } $url_parts['query'] = implode('&', $post_data); } else { //Its a string $url_parts['query'] = $options['post_data']; } } else { if(isset($options['method']) and $options['method'] == 'post') { $page = $url_parts['scheme'] . '://' . $url_parts['host'] . $url_parts['path']; } else { $page = $url; } } if($options['session'] and isset($GLOBALS['_binget_curl_session'])) $ch = $GLOBALS['_binget_curl_session']; //Session is stored in a global variable else $ch = curl_init($url_parts['host']); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $page) or die("Invalid cURL Handle Resouce"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); //Just return the data - not print the whole thing. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true); //We need the headers curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, !($options['return_body'])); //The content - if true, will not download the contents. There is a ! operation - don't remove it. if(isset($options['method']) and $options['method'] == 'post' and isset($url_parts['query'])) { curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $url_parts['query']); } //Set the headers our spiders sends curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $send_header['User-Agent']); //The Name of the UserAgent we will be using ;) $custom_headers = array("Accept: " . $send_header['Accept'] ); if(isset($options['modified_since'])) array_push($custom_headers,"If-Modified-Since: ".gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s /G/M/T',strtotime($options['modified_since']))); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $custom_headers); if($options['referer']) curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, $options['referer']); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, "/tmp/binget-cookie.txt"); //If ever needed... curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 5); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); if(isset($url_parts['user']) and isset($url_parts['pass'])) { $custom_headers = array("Authorization: Basic ".base64_encode($url_parts['user'].':'.$url_parts['pass'])); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $custom_headers); } $response = curl_exec($ch); $info = curl_getinfo($ch); //Some information on the fetch if($options['session'] and !$options['session_close']) $GLOBALS['_binget_curl_session'] = $ch; //Dont close the curl session. We may need it later - save it to a global variable else curl_close($ch); //If the session option is not set, close the session. FSockOpen // } else { //If there is no curl, use fsocketopen - but keep in mind that most advanced features will be lost with this approch. if(isset($url_parts['query'])) { if(isset($options['method']) and $options['method'] == 'post') $page = $url_parts['path']; else $page = $url_parts['path'] . '?' . $url_parts['query']; } else { $page = $url_parts['path']; } if(!isset($url_parts['port'])) $url_parts['port'] = 80; $fp = fsockopen($url_parts['host'], $url_parts['port'], $errno, $errstr, 30); if ($fp) { $out = ''; if(isset($options['method']) and $options['method'] == 'post' and isset($url_parts['query'])) { $out .= "POST $page HTTP/1.1/r/n"; } else { $out .= "GET $page HTTP/1.0/r/n"; //HTTP/1.0 is much easier to handle than HTTP/1.1 } $out .= "Host: $url_parts[host]/r/n"; $out .= "Accept: $send_header[Accept]/r/n"; $out .= "User-Agent: {$send_header['User-Agent']}/r/n"; if(isset($options['modified_since'])) $out .= "If-Modified-Since: ".gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s /G/M/T',strtotime($options['modified_since'])) ."/r/n"; $out .= "Connection: Close/r/n"; //HTTP Basic Authorization support if(isset($url_parts['user']) and isset($url_parts['pass'])) { $out .= "Authorization: Basic ".base64_encode($url_parts['user'].':'.$url_parts['pass']) . "/r/n"; } //If the request is post - pass the data in a special way. if(isset($options['method']) and $options['method'] == 'post' and $url_parts['query']) { $out .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded/r/n"; $out .= 'Content-Length: ' . strlen($url_parts['query']) . "/r/n"; $out .= "/r/n" . $url_parts['query']; } $out .= "/r/n"; fwrite($fp, $out); while (!feof($fp)) { $response .= fgets($fp, 128); } fclose($fp); } } //Get the headers in an associative array $headers = array(); if($info['http_code'] == 404) { $body = ""; $headers['Status'] = 404; } else { //Seperate header and content $header_text = substr($response, 0, $info['header_size']); $body = substr($response, $info['header_size']); foreach(explode("/n",$header_text) as $line) { $parts = explode(": ",$line); if(count($parts) == 2) $headers[$parts[0]] = chop($parts[1]); } } if(isset($cache_file)) { //Should we cache the URL? file_put_contents($cache_file, $response); } if($options['return_info']) return array('headers' => $headers, 'body' => $body, 'info' => $info, 'curl_handle'=>$ch); return $body; } ?>