Question

I am trying to use file_get_contents() to get the html from a page.
the following works great: file_get_contents('http://www.mypage.com?Title=Title') but the following causes an error:

$Title = 'Title';
file_get_contents("http://www.mypage.com?Title=$Title")

The error is:

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
The request line contained invalid characters following the protocol string.

Apache/1.3.41 Server at eiit.org Port 80

Does anyone know why?

Answer 1

You are using a string with single-quotes ; and there is no variable interpolation with single-quotes.

Which means the URL you’re trying to fetch is http://www.mypage.com?Title=$Title, and not http://www.mypage.com?Title=Title.

You should use a double-quoted string, to have variable interpolation :

$Title = 'Title';
file_get_contents("http://www.mypage.com?Title=$Title");

If this still doesn’t work :

• Check if your URL is OK : instead of directly passing it to file_get_contents, store it in a variable, and echo it — just to be sure it’s right.
• Why is there no page-name in your URL ?
  • You have the domain-name : www.mypage.com
  • And a parameter+value : Title=Title
  • But no file/page ? i.e., why don’t you have something like http://www.mypage.com/index.php?Title=$Title ? Or even http://www.mypage.com/?Title=$Title ?
• You might have to urlencode the values you’re passing as parameters in the URL.