Curl - grabbing info from remote .inc

erikhillis

Can someone please give me an example of using cURL to grab the variables in a remove .inc file? I've searched all over and have turned up no results thus far.

etully

[MAN]curl[/MAN]

erikhillis

Yes I've seen that page.

erikhillis

My code in curl.php is:

<?php
$ch = curl_init("http://www.urltotheincfile/file.inc");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo "The name is $name";

?>

file.inc contents:

<?php

$name = "Steve";

?>

...and the source of the curl.php file when loaded in the browser is:

<?php
$name = "Steve";
?>

The name is

NogDog

When you access a file via cURL, it is not executed in place in the calling file like when you include() a file from the local filesystem. You'll either have to [man]eval/man the text from that remote file, or rethink your methodology.

bradgrafelman

EDIT: Err, I'm dumb - didn't pay attention to the fact that it's a .inc extension and not .php !

etully

Eval'ing the response is dangerous. No, it's suicidal. Wait - I'm going with insanely suicidal. Anyway, don't do that. Nog Dog's second idea was better. Rethink the methodology.

One way to do it would be to parse the document looking for lines in the form of:
$ word = " value " ;
Assign value to $word after you've determined that it's an innocuous action.

Or you could look into changing the format of the text file to be better suited to communicating name value pairs. Honestly, it sounds like XML is better suited for this job.

etully

In otherwords, you can't get the raw PHP code across an HTTP connection.

Actually, he can because in his example, he's not parsing .inc files for PHP.
Nog Dog's point is right, though. Merely acquiring the content via cURL isn't going to perform the PHP commands as an include statement would. You would need to eval them (if it wasn't so dangerous). Parsing them would be safer - but there still could be a better way depending on what he's really trying to do.