Read a remote file using CURL
On some hosts the only way to read a remote file is using curl because they forbids PHP from reading non-local resources. In order to get past their limitation you need to use a small trick .. use the CURL library.
To check if your server has CURL, see Checking if your system has a PHP extension installed and check if cURL support is enabled.
The function needs to be called by providing the URL for the resource you need and it will retrieve the resource's content.
Example of usage :
$content = getFile('http://codepax.com');
and the function itself :
function getFile($url){ $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); $tmp = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); if ($tmp != false){ return $tmp; } }