Question

I have a php script that I’m trying to pull some data from a database on one site and display it on another site. I need to reference some files, but using require filename.php throws errors due to my allow_url_fopen being set to off for security reasons. Is there an alternative way to “require” the file using cURL instead?

Example OLD:

<?php require ('http://site.com/filename.php'); ?>

I tried this, but it doesn’t work:

<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://site.com/filename.php');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$contents = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// display file
require $file_contents;
?>

Answer 1

Ms. Ramsey,

The most widely accepted solution for your problems in 2011 is to use what’s called a RESTful architecture, which was first widely championed by Yahoo a few years back. It’s REALLLLLLLY easy and not complicated at all as you will soon see.

First, on the “server” side (where you’re receiving the information) you create a simple RESTful server, the most simplistic one I can think of being (coding on the spot here):

// RESTful service
$action = 'action_' . filter_input(INPUT_GET, 'action', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$params = filter_input(INPUT_GET, 'params', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

if (function_exists($action))
{
    // Run the action w/ the parameters
    $data = call_user_func_array($action, json_decode($params));

    // Encode the data in a HTTP friendly way...
    $output = json_encode($data);

    echo $output;
}
else
{
    trigger_error('Invalid action: ' . htmlspecialchars($action), E_USER_ERROR);
}


function action_foo($param1)
{
    return "Param 1: $param1";
}

Now, on your client side, all you have to do is this:

$ch = curl_init();
$params = json_encode(array('param1' => 'value', 'param2' => 'value'));
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://site.com/restServer.php?action=foo&params=' . $params);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$data = json_decode($output);

It actually works pretty nicely.

I hope you pick my answer!