[SOLVED] file_get_contents() can't access a URL that a browser can

[bibliovermis]

The problem URL is [ http://www.neobux.com/rel/bl/?o=D4B44A9F3179942FCED0E440FF71F64F828DC2990AD18F9E ].

 

It can be accessed via a browser, however using file_get_contents returns the following error after timing out: "failed to open stream: HTTP request failed!"

 

I've tried using cURL to mimic a browser, with no success. The URL loads perfectly fine on a machine that has never visited the neobux site, so it isn't a tracking issue of some type.

 

Thank you for any insight into this perplexing issue.

[trq]

Likely url wrappers are disabled within your php configuration. Take a look at your php.ini file.

[bibliovermis]

Likely url wrappers are disabled within your php configuration.

 

My apologies for not clarifying that file_get_contents works for any other URL.

 

I did try explicitly turning on the allow_url_fopen flag via htaccess & using the full fopen routine, with no change in result.

[bibliovermis]

After further testing, no part of the neobux.com is accessible by script / browser emulator.

 

http://www.hashemian.com/tools/browser-simulator.htm

 

Has anybody ever seen a site before that is perfectly functional in a browser and non-existent to a browser emulator?

[xphoid]

They appear to be using a fairly restrictive proxy server. (header shows Server:proxyshield-proxy4)

 

I did manage to get the page contents using curl mimicking Firefox.

 

$header = array();
$header[] = 'Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5';
$header[] = 'Cache-Control: max-age=0';
$header[] = 'Connection: keep-alive';
$header[] = 'Keep-Alive: 300';
$header[] = 'Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7';
$header[] = 'Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5';
$header[] = 'Pragma: ';
$ch = curl_init(); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.neobux.com/rel/bl/?o=D4B44A9F3179942FCED0E440FF71F64F828DC2990AD18F9E');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $header);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, true); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, '');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 20);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
echo $result;

[MockY]

I know it's a very old thread, but I would just like to thank xphoid for providing me with a solution to my current problem. You saved my rear end.