Alternative to file_get_contents?

Question

$xml_file = file_get_contents(SITE_PATH . 'cms/data.php');

The problem is that a server has URL file-access disabled. I cannot enable it, its a hosting thing.

So the question is this. The data.php file generates xml code.

How can I execute this and get the xml data without doing the above method?

Is it possible?

Answer 1

Yes, if you have URL wrappers disabled you should use sockets or, even better, the cURL library.

If it's part of your site then refer to it with the file system path, not the web URL. /var/www/..., rather than http://domain.tld/....

Answer 2

If you're trying to read XML generated from a URL without file_get_contents() then you'll probably want to have a look at cURL

Answer 3

If you have it available, using curl is your best option.

You can see if it is enabled by doing phpinfo() and searching the page for curl.

If it is enabled, try this:

$curl_handle=curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, SITE_PATH . 'cms/data.php');
$xml_file = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);

Answer 4

Use cURL. This function is an alternative to file_get_contents.

function url_get_contents ($Url) {
    if (!function_exists('curl_init')){ 
        die('CURL is not installed!');
    }
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $Url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $output = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $output;
}

Answer 5

If the file is local as your comment about SITE_PATH suggest, it's pretty simple just execute the script and cache the result in a variable using the output control functions :

function print_xml_data_file()
{
    include(XML_DATA_FILE_DIRECTORY . 'cms/data.php');
}

function get_xml_data()
{
    ob_start();
    print_xml_data_file();
    $xml_file = ob_get_contents();
    ob_end_clean();
    return $xml_file;
}

If it's remote as lot of others said curl is the way to go. If it isn't present try socket_create or fsockopen. If nothing work... change your hosting provider.