process a url into a string - somebody must know!

maccman

I was wondering how to process a url into a string.
(putting a url in, and getting the html out)
I tried using this:

$url = 'http://www.google.com';
$page = @implode("", (@file($url))) or die($errormsg);
echo $page; //do stuff with page...

It works, however some pages (https) don't work.
Is there any other way of doing this, apart from using
libcurl? Thanks

jara06

you actually mean, how to fetch the content of a webpage ?

maccman

jara06 wrote:
you actually mean, how to fetch the content of a webpage ?

In a nutshell, yes.

qolbu

have you try file_get_contents() ?

jara06

If you bothered to look in the manual, you would have seen some valuable information right away.
Just try looking at the find() command at php.net.
Im not into digging https pages, but my guess is, that it wouldnt be too difficult.

Apart from the fopen- and file-series (and libcurl), I cant think of any methods.

maccman

qolbu wrote:
have you try file_get_contents() ?

Yes this works, however it doesn't work on https sites.

Weedpacket

It will given suitable configuration: https is supported starting from PHP 4.3.0, if you have compiled in support for OpenSSL.

If you haven't got OpenSSL installed, then cURL won't work either, as that uses OpenSSL for https transactions as well.