Get file content from URL?

Question

When I use following URL in browser then it prompt me to download a text file with JSOn content.

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=p3&chs=250x100&chd=t:

Answer 1

1) local simplest methods

<?php
echo readfile("http://example.com/");   //needs "Allow_url_include" enabled
//OR
echo include("http://example.com/");    //needs "Allow_url_include" enabled
//OR
echo file_get_contents("http://example.com/");
//OR
echo stream_get_contents(fopen('http://example.com/', "rb")); //you may use "r" instead of "rb"  //needs "Allow_url_fopen" enabled
?> 

2) Better Way is CURL:

echo get_remote_data('http://example.com'); // GET request 
echo get_remote_data('http://example.com', "var2=something&var3=blabla" ); // POST request

It automatically handles FOLLOWLOCATION problem + Remote urls:
src="./imageblabla.png" turned into:
src="http://example.com/path/imageblabla.png"

Code : https://github.com/tazotodua/useful-php-scripts/blob/master/get-remote-url-content-data.php

Answer 2

Don't forget: to get HTTPS contents, your OPENSSL extension should be enabled in your php.ini. (how to get contents of site use HTTPS)

Answer 3

$url = "https://chart.googleapis....";
$json = file_get_contents($url);

Now you can either echo the $json variable, if you just want to display the output, or you can decode it, and do something with it, like so:

$data = json_decode($json);
var_dump($data);

Answer 4

Depending on your PHP configuration, this may be a easy as using:

$jsonData = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=p3&chs=250x100&chd=t:60,40&chl=Hello|World&chof=json'));

However, if allow_url_fopen isn't enabled on your system, you could read the data via CURL as follows:

<?php
    $curlSession = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($curlSession, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=p3&chs=250x100&chd=t:60,40&chl=Hello|World&chof=json');
    curl_setopt($curlSession, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($curlSession, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

    $jsonData = json_decode(curl_exec($curlSession));
    curl_close($curlSession);
?>

Incidentally, if you just want the raw JSON data, then simply remove the json_decode.

Answer 5

Use file_get_contents in combination with json_decode and echo.