How to call url from php using C-url :: alternative to file_get_contents()
This is a nice and simple substitute to get_file_contents() using curl, it returns FALSE if $contents is empty.
<?php
function curl_get_file_contents($URL)
{
$c = curl_init();
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, $URL);
$contents = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);
if ($contents) return $contents;
else return FALSE;
}
?>
Then another question
How to enable cURL in your server ?
To enable curl library we need to modify the php.ini file.
1) Locate the following files:
apache\bin\php.ini
php\php.ini
php\php4\php.ini or php\php5\php.ini
2) Uncomment the following line on your php.ini file by removing the semicolon.
;extension=php_curl.dll
3) Restart your apache server.
4) Check your phpinfo if curl was properly enabled.
Otherwise you can dynamically enable the library by calling dl(); function. But it is deprecated by new version of PHP