How to make a request to a web page with PHP?

Question

What i\'m trying to achieve is this:

1st- I want to query a page like google but without filling it\'s search filed manually 2nd- I want to get the result and save it to

Answer 1

<?php
$r = new HttpRequest('http://example.com/feed.rss', HttpRequest::METH_GET);
$r->setOptions(array('lastmodified' => filemtime('local.rss')));
$r->addQueryData(array('category' => 3));
try {
    $r->send();
    if ($r->getResponseCode() == 200) {
        file_put_contents('local.rss', $r->getResponseBody());
    }
} catch (HttpException $ex) {
    echo $ex;
}
?>

From the php manual...

Answer 2

You should use cURL to do so, not only because it is way faster than file_get_contents, but also because it has many more features. Another reason to use it is that, as Xeoncross correctly mentioned in the comments, file_get_contents may be disabled by your webhost for security reasons.

A basic example would be this one:

$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt( $curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com' );
curl_exec( $curl_handle ); // Execute the request
curl_close( $curl_handle );

If you need the return data from the request, you need to specify the CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER option:

$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt( $curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com' );
curl_setopt( $curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true ); // Fetch the contents too
$html = curl_exec( $curl_handle ); // Execute the request
curl_close( $curl_handle );

There are tons of cURL options, for example, you can set a request timeout:

curl_setopt( $curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2 ); // 2 second timeout

For a reference of all options see the curl_setopt() reference.

Answer 3

$html = file_get_contents('http://example.com');

is the simplest version you'll get.

Answer 4

If you find the name of the field (q) you want to fill on the remote page (Google), you can fill it by using GET syntax:

http://www.google.com/?q=hello

Answer 5

You can use PHP CUrl, for detailed manupulations with the site you access!

you can even perform get and posts on the site you access, or use services from different sites (in case the site provides services!).