Reading remote file contents with PHP+CURL

The preferred method to read contents of a file into a string with PHP is usually file_get_contents(), but sometimes server configurations do not allow for file_get_contents() to read from a remote server. Luckily CURL provides a nice workaround (you must have the libcurl package installed on your version of PHP). Here's how I retrieve data from my anime list on AniDB.net for use on anime.zakness.com:

The function: get_contents()

  1. // returns a String containing the contents of a URL
    2. 

  2. function get_contents($url, $post="") {
    3. 

  3.     $ch = curl_init();
    4. 

  4.     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    5. 

  5.     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
    6. 

  6.     if (!empty($post)) {
    7. 

  7.         curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST,1);
    8. 

  8.         curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post);
    9. 

  9.     }
    10. 

  10.     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    11. 

  11.     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    12. 

  12.     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, "");
    13. 

  13.     $string = curl_exec($ch) or die(curl_error());
    14. 

  14.     curl_close($ch);
    15. 

  15.     return $string;
    16. 

  16. }
    17. 

  17. source file: get-contents.txt
    18.

Using get_contents() to access anidb.net

I can use get_contents() to access the source code of my AniDB MyList (which needs to send POST information to AniDB's server). Then I use preg_match_all() to get all the relevant information and populate the data array ($data).

  1. $data = array();
    2. 

  2. $errors = array();
    3. 

  3. $source = get_contents("http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl", "show=mylist&xuser=zaclin&xpass=******");
    4. 

  4. if (empty($source)) array_push($errors, "Could not retrieve raw source data.");
    5. 

  5. preg_match_all("@class=\"title\".+aid=(\d+)\">(.+)<\/a>.+(\d+?)\s*\/\s*(\d+?).+(\d+?)\s*\/\s*\d+@Usx", $source, $m, PREG_SET_ORDER);
    6. 

  6. if (!$m) array_push($errors,"Could not find matching data.");
    7. 

  7. else {
    8. 

  8.     foreach ($m as $match) {
    9. 

  9.         $d = array();
    10. 

  10.         $d['id'] = $match[1];
    11. 

  11.         $d['name'] = $match[2];
    12. 

  12.         $d['have'] = $match[3];
    13. 

  13.         $d['total'] = $match[4];
    14. 

  14.         $d['seen'] = $match[5];
    15. 

  15.         $data[] = $d;
    16. 

  16.     }
    17. 

  17. }
    18. 

  18. source file: get-contents-example.txt
    19.

These two snippets do all the dirty work for me, now I can do whatever I want with the data. Not too shabby!