file_get_contents with HTTP: No such file or directory

Question

I'm trying to execute a straightforward PHP call to load the contents of a web page: $result = file_get_contents("http://www.google.com");

The result coming back is a strange file not found error: Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.google.com): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/html/test.php on line 5

I have "allow_url_fopen = On" on my php.ini and no .htaccess files that might alter the setting in the directory. Any ideas? I've never had trouble with this function before on different servers.

Answer 1

Did you re-initialize your webserver on changing "allow_url_fopen"?

OR

The user agent "PHP" may be disallowed on the server you are querying.

OR

From the PHP Manual page: Note: If you're opening a URI with special characters, such as spaces, you need to encode the URI with urlencode().

You can do a test of the php.ini settings like this...

if (ini_get('allow_url_fopen') == '1') {
   // use fopen() or file_get_contents()
} else {
   // use curl or your custom function
}

Answer 2

I think it is some kind of proxy effect.
Do you use proxy? If this is the case, you must create a stream context with the proxy details.

Answer 3

Not sure, but try:

if(($fp=fopen('http://www.google.com/', 'rb'))!=null)
{
 // for php5 and up or use fread for php4
 $contents = stream_get_contents($fp);
 fclose($fp);
}

Answer 4

Apparently the HTTP stream wrapper is not present, which causes this error.

print_r(stream_get_wrappers());

Array
(
    [0] => php
    [1] => file
    [2] => data
    [3] => compress.zlib
)

I'm not sure how it was removed or how to restore it, but that would explain it! I've tried stream_wrapper_restore('http') in case it was unregistered somehow, but that has no effect.