[RESOLVED] Do I need curl to use fopen?

jackiw

Do I need the curl module installed to use fopen to open an URL? The reason why I'm asking is that I'm having a very strange problem using fopen on my server as you can see on this thread http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?t=10305571

drew010

no, curl is a completely separate library for handling urls, one doesnt rely on the other.

jackiw

So do you have an idea why the fopen function isn't working when I try to open an URL instead of a file? Or is there any other function similar to it that I can use? Thanks a lot

planetsim

Well I can only assume that allow_url_fopen is disabled, the other similar function for fopen would be [man]fsockopen[/man] its used for networking so URL etc shouldnt have too much trouble with.

jackiw

It's so weird. The allow_url_fopen is enabled and it's not working. Any other thoughts?

drew010

well, if the error you are always getting is what you put in your last thread
Warning: fopen(): php_network_getaddresses: gethostbyname failed
it means the problem is not with php, its with the dns server that is either on your computer or is being used by the isp. it cant resolve the host that you are trying to connect to.

jackiw

Well, I restarted the server and it worked now... but then I have this other problem. When I fopen an URL and the site doesn't exist, it still says that the site exists. For a live sample, please visit http://pikographics.com/fopen.php and the code is below:

<form name="form1" method="post" action="<? print $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
  <input name="site" type="text" id="site" value="http://" size="35">
  <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Check">
</form>
<hr>

<?php
if($REQUEST_METHOD=='POST') {
$handle = fopen($site, "rb");
$contents = '';
while (!feof($handle)) {
  $contents .= fread($handle, 1024);
}
if($contents != '') { print "Site found"; }
if($contents == '') { print "Site not found"; }
fclose($handle);
}
?>

drew010

$handle = @fopen($site, "rb");

if (!$handle) {
  echo "Unable to open page...";
} else {
  //it exists get contents.
}

jackiw

Same thing...

<form name="form1" method="post" action="<? print $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
  <input name="site" type="text" id="site" value="http://" size="35">
  <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Check">
</form>
<hr>

<?php
if($REQUEST_METHOD=='POST') {
$handle = @fopen($site, "rb");

if (!$handle) {
  echo "Unable to open page...";
} else {
  print "Page Found";
} 
}
?>

still not working

drew010

strange behaviour......try to fgets the contents of a url that should be bad but isnt according to your script and see what it outputs.

jackiw

If the site doesn't exist, it redirects me to my domain name... check it out: http://pikographics.com/fopen.php

<form name="form1" method="post" action="<? print $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
  <input name="site" type="text" id="site" value="http://" size="35">
  <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Check">
</form>
<hr>

<?php
if($REQUEST_METHOD=='POST') {
$handle = fopen($site, "r");
$contents = '';
while (!feof($handle)) {
  $contents .= fgets($handle, 1024);
}
print $contents;
fclose($handle);
}
?>

drew010

so i see, this is what gets returned by a site that doesnt exist: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.pikographics.com">

seems something with the dns isnt normal here.

jackiw

Any idea how to fix that or work around that?

<form name="form1" method="post" action="<? print $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
  <input name="site" type="text" id="site" value="http://" size="35">
  <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Check">
</form>
<hr>

<?php
if($REQUEST_METHOD=='POST') {
$handle = fopen($site, "r");
$contents = '';
while (!feof($handle)) {
  $contents .= fgets($handle, 1024);
}

if($contents != '<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.pikographics.com">') { print "Site found"; }
if($contents == '<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.pikographics.com">') { print "Site not found"; }

fclose($handle);
}
?>

drew010

are you the server admin here or is it someone else. check /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/hosts

jackiw

I'm the server admin and I'll check on that. And what should I look for?
But for now, I can work around this error by using:

if(substr($contents,18,7) == "refresh") { print "Site not found"; } else { print "Site Found"; }

Thanks a lot for the help.

drew010

since you are using cpanel, it may be in the default apache index file, probably /usr/local/apache/htdocs/index.html
resolv.conf should have a nameserver ip in there, which should be the dns server that your isp (dedicated server provider) runs. hosts shouldnt have very much in it, maybe 1-2 lines. this is a way to override dns and automatically map hosts to ip.
look in whm for some dns configurations.