One way to solve that issue is to use the cURL library (the client URL library) :
Here below is the PHP function I have been using in such case :
/**
* @param str $url
* @return str $content
*/
function URLToXml($url)
{
// create curl resource
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
$content = curl_exec($curl);
//close curl resource to free up system resources
curl_close($curl);
return $content;
}
Note :
"For accessing services we need an HTTP client. We can also use file_get_contents (http://www.php.net/file_get_contents) to access not only local files but
also those located on remote servers over HTTP.
However, file_get_contents uses GET, you would need considerable extra work to use a different verb like POST. Also, fopen wrappers need to be enabled to let file_get_contents() access remote files. System administrators may disable fopen wrappers due to security concerns.
The solution to the limitations associated with file_get_contents is to use an HTTP client library such as CURL (http://www.php.net/curl). CURL PHP API is a wrapper of libcurl (http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/), a library that allows you to communicate using many different types of protocols. It supports HTTP verbs such as POST and PUT in addition to GET.
[..]
HTTP verbs and how they apply while using REST web services:
GET : Retrieves a resource identified by a URI.
POST : Sends a resource to the server. Updates the resource in the location identified by the URI.
PUT : Sends a resource to the server, to be stored in the location identified by the URI.
DELETE : Deletes a resource identified by a URI.
HEAD : Retrieves the metadata of a resource identified by the URI.
"
(extracted from RESTful PHP Web Services, Samisa Abeysinghe
