Php Save fopen Result To A String

Question

How can I get the "$buffer" value into a string, and use it outside the fopen and fclose functions? Thanks.

$handle = @fopen("http://www.example.com/", "r");

if ($handle) {
    while (!feof($handle)) {
        $buffer = fgetss($handle, 5000);

      echo $buffer ;
    }

    fclose($handle);
}

Answer 1

Try file_get_contents() :

$buffer = file_get_contents("/my/file.txt");

Answer 2

$handle = @fopen("http://www.example.com/", "r");

$buffer = '';
if ($handle) {
    while (!feof($handle)) {
      $buffer .= fgetss($handle, 5000);
    }

    fclose($handle);
}