use php to do wget

What is the easiest way to get a http page and save it to a local file(without using wget)?

I want to use php as template language, and harvest the resulting file from the .php html output.

kind of like fopen("http://localhost/boo.php?id=1", "r") and then write to a local file called file001.txt.

Any input will be appreciated.

fopen("http://localhost/boo.php?id=1", "r") should do what you want - here's some code I use on one of my systems:

$fd=fopen("http://someaddress/xxx/xxx.html","r");
$new2=fread($fd,50000);
fclose($fd);

Thanks. I have found out Snoopy, a php class which will do what I want. But your solution is even better.