Question

I am working on my website from localhost (http://172.16.65.1/) a MAMP server on OSX.
I want to load some JSON from Google and some simple tests show me I have a problem here..

echo file_get_contents("http://www.google.com"); // FAILS
// PHP log: [07-Dec-2011 23:09:21] PHP Warning:  file_get_contents(http://www.google.com) [<a href='function.file-get-contents'>function.file-get-contents</a>]: failed to open stream: Host is down in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/-tests/get-json.php on line 3
echo file_get_contents("http://www.yahoo.com"); // FAILS

// echo file_get_contents("http://localhost"); // WORKS
// echo file_get_contents("http://172.16.65.1/"); // WORKS - My MAMP server

What can I do about this?
It works fine on my host providers server.

Answer 1

From the documentation for file_get_contents:

A URL can be used as a filename with this function if the fopen wrappers have been enabled. See fopen() for more details on how to specify the filename. See the Supported Protocols and Wrappers for links to information about what abilities the various wrappers have, notes on their usage, and information on any predefined variables they may provide.

Check in your php.ini so allow_url_fopen is set to on.

EDIT:

I didn’t noticed that you actually could use file_get_contents locally, so now I’m thinking that this could have something to do with your firewall settings.

Also, try to set the user_agent in your php.ini if not already done.