Question

I have a PHP script that connects to an api and posts information to their systems, but when its trying to connect it throws a fatal error:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Problem with
'http://apitestserver.co.uk:9000/Service.svc/Items' in
/var/www/html/e/connect_test.php:17 Stack trace: #0 
/var/www/html/e/connect_test.php(39): 
do_http_request('http://apitest....', 'hello') #1 {main} thrown in 
/var/www/html/e/connect_test.php on line 17

If I send it to a PHP script which just grabs the IP then it works, but if I send it to the API it doesn’t. My PHP script creates XML and then forwards to the server. I was getting errors so I just created the following smaller script purely to test the connection:

function do_http_request($url, $data, $method = 'POST', 
    $optional_headers = 'Content-Type: application/atom+xml') {

  $params = array(
    'http' => array(
        'method' => $method,
        'content' => $data
    )
  );

  if ($optional_headers !== null) {
    $params['http']['header'] = $optional_headers;
  }

  $ctx = stream_context_create($params);
  $fp = fopen($url, 'rb', false, $ctx);
  if (!$fp) {
    throw new Exception("Problem with $url");
  }

  $response = @stream_get_contents($fp);
  if ($response === false) {
    throw new Exception("Problem reading data from $url");
  }

  $metaData = stream_get_meta_data($fp);
  fclose($fp);

  if(!preg_match('~^HTTP.*([0-9]{3})~', 
    $metaData['wrapper_data'][0], $matches)){
    throw new Exception('MALFORED RESPONSE - COULD NOT UNDERSTAND HTTP CODE');
  }
  if (substr($matches[1], 0, 1) != '2') {
    throw new Exception('SERVER REPORTED HTTP ERROR ' . $matches[1]);
  }
  return $response;
}
$data = 'hello';
$paul = 
  do_http_request('http://apitestserver.co.uk:9000/Service.svc/Items',$data);

echo $paul;

If I change the URL to a simple script on another one of our servers which just grabs the IP of the incoming connection and returns it:

 $ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
 echo 'IP equals = ' . $ip;

Then it works fine with no errors.

Update –

with errors on it throws the following warning, probably because the script is not sending the correct info to the API

Warning: fopen(http://apitestserver.co.uk:9000/Service.svc/Items) 
[function.fopen]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 
500 Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.

Also note that I can access the api server fine using fiddler to send manually created items across, its just when this script tries to connect and send data there is an issue. I wrote another quick script which connects and prints out the default response (an rss feed of submitted items)

When I run the ‘main’ connector script it throws the following two errors

Warning: fopen() [function.fopen]: php_network_getaddresses: 
getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known in 
/var/www/html/e/sequence.php on line 65

Warning: fopen(http://apitestserver.co.uk:9000/Service.svc/Items) 
[function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Operation now in progress 
in /var/www/html/e/sequence.php on line 65

Answer 1

I would suggest using curl instead of fopen(). curl is both more flexible, and more secure. Many servers disable allow_url_fopen, curl also fails more gracefully when there are problems on the remote server.