How do I make an asynchronous GET request in PHP?

Question

I wish to make a simple GET request to another script on a different server. How do I do this?

In one case, I just need to request an external script without the need for any output.

make_request('http://www.externalsite.com/script1.php?variable=45'); //example usage 

In the second case, I need to get the text output.

$output = make_request('http://www.externalsite.com/script2.php?variable=45'); echo $output; //string output 

To be honest, I do not want to mess around with CURL as this isn't really the job of CURL. I also do not want to make use of http_get as I do not have the PECL extensions.

Would fsockopen work? If so, how do I do this without reading in the contents of the file? Is there no other way?

Thanks all

Update

I should of added, in the first case, I do not want to wait for the script to return anything. As I understand file_get_contents() will wait for the page to load fully etc?

Answer 1

file_get_contents will do what you want

$output = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/'); echo $output; 

Edit: One way to fire off a GET request and return immediately.

Quoted from http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2008/06/how-to-post-an.html

function curl_post_async($url, $params) {     foreach ($params as $key => &$val) {       if (is_array($val)) $val = implode(',', $val);         $post_params[] = $key.'='.urlencode($val);     }     $post_string = implode('&', $post_params);      $parts=parse_url($url);      $fp = fsockopen($parts['host'],         isset($parts['port'])?$parts['port']:80,         $errno, $errstr, 30);      $out = "POST ".$parts['path']." HTTP/1.1\r\n";     $out.= "Host: ".$parts['host']."\r\n";     $out.= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";     $out.= "Content-Length: ".strlen($post_string)."\r\n";     $out.= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";     if (isset($post_string)) $out.= $post_string;      fwrite($fp, $out);     fclose($fp); } 

What this does is open a socket, fire off a get request, and immediately close the socket and return.

Answer 2

This is how to make Marquis' answer work with both POST and GET requests:

  // $type must equal 'GET' or 'POST'   function curl_request_async($url, $params, $type='POST')   {       foreach ($params as $key => &$val) {         if (is_array($val)) $val = implode(',', $val);         $post_params[] = $key.'='.urlencode($val);       }       $post_string = implode('&', $post_params);        $parts=parse_url($url);        $fp = fsockopen($parts['host'],           isset($parts['port'])?$parts['port']:80,           $errno, $errstr, 30);        // Data goes in the path for a GET request       if('GET' == $type) $parts['path'] .= '?'.$post_string;        $out = "$type ".$parts['path']." HTTP/1.1\r\n";       $out.= "Host: ".$parts['host']."\r\n";       $out.= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";       $out.= "Content-Length: ".strlen($post_string)."\r\n";       $out.= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";       // Data goes in the request body for a POST request       if ('POST' == $type && isset($post_string)) $out.= $post_string;        fwrite($fp, $out);       fclose($fp);   }