PHP Function file_get_contents Replacement

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

file_get_contents() is a great tool for reading a file, whether local or from another site. In its truest form you can do this
$content = file_get_contents('http://yahoo.com');

Now you have the entire home page of yahoo in a variable ($content) and you can do whatever you want with it and then display it with an echo statement. But, you must be running PHP v4.3 or greater or it errors out. Here is a function that you can place in your code to fix that. I found this a while back at php.net while investigating some issues with the function.

Code:

if (!function_exists("file_get_contents")) { 


  function file_get_contents($filename, $use_include_path = 0) { 


   $data = FALSE; 


   $file = fopen($filename, "rb", $use_include_path); 


   if ($file) { 


     while (!feof($file)) $data .= fread($file, 1024); 


     fclose($file); 


   } 


   return $data; 


  } 


}