SimpleXML - I/O warning : failed to load external entity

Question

I'm trying to create a small application that will simply read an RSS feed and then layout the info on the page.

All the instructions I find make this seem simplistic but for some reason it just isn't working. I have the following

include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/rss.php');
$feed = file_get_contents('http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/0/football/rss.xml?edition=int');
$items = simplexml_load_file($feed);

That's it, it then breaks on the third line with the following error

Error: [2] simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xm
The rest of the XML file is shown.

I have turned on allow_url_fopen and allow_url_include in my settings but still nothing. I've tried multiple feeds that all end up with the same result?

I'm going mad here

Answer 1

simplexml_load_file() interprets an XML file (either a file on your disk or a URL) into an object. What you have in $feed is a string.

You have two options:

• Use file_get_contents() to get the XML feed as a string, and use e simplexml_load_string():

  $feed = file_get_contents('...');
  $items = simplexml_load_string($feed);
  

• Load the XML feed directly using simplexml_load_file():

  $items = simplexml_load_file('...');
  

Answer 2

You can also load the content with cURL, if file_get_contents insn't enabled on your server.

Example:

$ch = curl_init();  

curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,"http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/0/football/rss.xml?edition=int");
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);

$output = curl_exec($ch);

curl_close($ch);

$items = simplexml_load_string($output);