Retrieving iTunes App Store XML with cURL and PHP

Question

Hey guys,

I have been extracting information from the iTunes App Store for the past couple of weeks using a script I found and modified. Everything was working fine until a couple days ago when I realized that no XML was being generated anymore. Here is the code for the script that generates the XML:

<?php
header("Content-type: text/plain"); 
ini_set('display_errors', false);

if(isset($_GET['appID']))
{
 $appID = (int)stripslashes($_GET['appID']);

 $url = "http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=" . $appID . "&mt=8";

 $useragent = "iTunes/9.0.2 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5.8) AppleWebKit/531.21.8";
 $header = array("X-Apple-Store-Front: 143441-1");

 $ch = curl_init();
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $header);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent);

 $result = curl_exec($ch);

 curl_close($ch); 

 echo $result;
}
?>

So I added the HTTPHEADER option to no avail, but the kicker is that it works perfectly well when I go to Terminal and type this:

curl -s -A "iTunes/9.0.2 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5.8) AppleWebKit/531.21.8" -H "X-Apple-Store-Front: 143441-1" 'http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=339038562&mt=8'

It returns the XML that I need, but why won't the PHP script work?

Appreciate any help!

Answer 1

Works fine for me. Here are few things to think about:

• Are you sure $GET['appID'] is set? Perhaps the script is being run via a POST?
• Comment out ini_set('display_errors', false); and see if any notices/warnings/errors appear.
• Is the script running on the same box as the curl command line?