How to send a GET request from PHP?

Question

I'm planning to use PHP for a simple requirement. I need to download a XML content from a URL, for which I need to send HTTP GET request to that URL.

How do I do it in PHP?

Answer 1

Unless you need more than just the contents of the file, you could use file_get_contents.

$xml = file_get_contents("http://www.example.com/file.xml"); 

For anything more complex, I'd use cURL.

Answer 2

For more advanced GET/POST requests, you can install the CURL library (http://us3.php.net/curl):

$ch = curl_init("REMOTE XML FILE URL GOES HERE"); // such as http://example.com/example.xml curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); $data = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch);