file_get_contents throws 400 Bad Request error PHP

I'm just using a file_get_contents() to get the latest tweets from a user like this:

$tweet = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/User.json'));

This works fine on my localhost but when I upload it to my server it throws this error:

Warning: file_get_contents(http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/User.json) [function.file-get-contents]:failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request...

Not sure what might be causing it, maybe a php configuration I need to set on my server?

Thanks in advance!

You might want to try using curl to retrieve the data instead of file_get_contents. curl has better support for error handling:

// make request
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/User.json"); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 
$output = curl_exec($ch);   

// convert response
$output = json_decode($output);

// handle error; error output
if(curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE) !== 200) {

  var_dump($output);
}

curl_close($ch);

This may give you a better idea why you're receiving the error. A common error is hitting the rate limit on your server.

You can use file_get_contents adding the ignore_errors option set to true, in this way you will get the entire body of the response in case of error (HTTP/1.1 400, for example) and not only a simple false.

You can see an example here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11479968/3926617

If you want access to response's headers, you can use $http_response_header after the request.

http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.httpresponseheader.php

Just a little addendum on Ben's answer. According to the PHP manual the CURLOPT_URL option may be set when inizializing the cURL handle with curl_init().

// make request
$ch = curl_init("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/User.json");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 
$output = curl_exec($ch);   

// convert response
$output = json_decode($output);

// handle error; error output
if(curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE) !== 200) {

  var_dump($output);
}

curl_close($ch);