Copy Image from Remote Server Over HTTP

I am looking for a simple way to import/copy images from remote server to a local folder using PHP. I have no FTP access to the server, but all remote images can be accessed via HTTP (i.e. http://www.mydomain.com/myimage.jpg).

Example use: A user wishes to add an image to his profile. The image already exists on the web and the user provides with a direct URL. I do not wish to hotlink the image but to import and serve from my domain.

Solution 1:

If you have PHP5 and the HTTP stream wrapper enabled on your server, it's incredibly simple to copy it to a local file:

copy('http://somedomain.com/file.jpeg', '/tmp/file.jpeg');

This will take care of any pipelining etc. that's needed. If you need to provide some HTTP parameters there is a third 'stream context' parameter you can provide.

Solution 2:

use

$imageString = file_get_contents("http://example.com/image.jpg");
$save = file_put_contents('Image/saveto/image.jpg',$imageString);

Solution 3:

PHP has a built-in function file_get_contents(), which reads the content of a file into a string.

<?php
//Get the file
$content = file_get_contents("http://example.com/image.jpg");

//Store in the filesystem. $fp = fopen("/location/to/save/image.jpg", "w"); fwrite($fp, $content); fclose($fp); ?> If you wish to store the file in a database, simply use the $content variable and don't save the file to disk.

Solution 4:

You've got about these four possibilities:

• Remote files. This needs allow_url_fopen to be enabled in php.ini, but it's the easiest method.

• Alternatively you could use cURL if your PHP installation supports it. There's even an example.

• And if you really want to do it manually use the HTTP module.

• Don't even try to use sockets directly.

Solution 5:

Here's the most basic way:

$url = "http://other-site/image.png";
$dir = "/my/local/dir/";

$rfile = fopen($url, "r");
$lfile = fopen($dir . basename($url), "w");

while(!feof($url)) fwrite($lfile, fread($rfile, 1), 1);

fclose($rfile);
fclose($lfile);

But if you're doing lots and lots of this (or your host blocks file access to remote systems), consider using CURL, which is more efficient, mildly faster and available on more shared hosts.

You can also spoof the user agent to look like a desktop rather than a bot!

$url = "http://other-site/image.png";
$dir = "/my/local/dir/";
$lfile = fopen($dir . basename($url), "w");

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $lfile);

fclose($lfile);
curl_close($ch);

With both instances, you might want to pass it through GD to make sure it really is an image.