Alternative to file_get_contents?

Solution 1:

Use cURL. This function is an alternative to file_get_contents.

function url_get_contents ($Url) {
    if (!function_exists('curl_init')){ 
        die('CURL is not installed!');
    }
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $Url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $output = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $output;
}

Solution 2:

You should try something like this, I am doing this for my project, its a fallback system

//function to get the remote data
function url_get_contents ($url) {
    if (function_exists('curl_exec')){ 
        $conn = curl_init($url);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, true);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT,  true);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        $url_get_contents_data = (curl_exec($conn));
        curl_close($conn);
    }elseif(function_exists('file_get_contents')){
        $url_get_contents_data = file_get_contents($url);
    }elseif(function_exists('fopen') && function_exists('stream_get_contents')){
        $handle = fopen ($url, "r");
        $url_get_contents_data = stream_get_contents($handle);
    }else{
        $url_get_contents_data = false;
    }
return $url_get_contents_data;
} 

then later you can do like this

$data = url_get_contents("http://www.google.com");
if($data){
//Do Something....
}