file_get_contents extremely long load time?

[smerny]

I have this simple code just to test/learn getting data from other webpages:

<?php
$raw = file_get_contents("http://services.runescape.com/m=itemdb_rs/Cactus_spine/viewitem.ws?obj=6016");

$newlines = array("\t","\n","\r","\x20\x20","\0","\x0B");

$content = str_replace($newlines, "", html_entity_decode($raw));

$start = strpos($content,'<b>Market price:</b> ')+21;

$end = strpos($content,'</span><span><b>Maximum price:',$start);

$marketprice = substr($content,$start,$end-$start);

echo $marketprice;
?>

 

this code is taking over 30 seconds to load... is this normal for file_get_contents? the page that i am getting contents from will load at a decent rate when i go directly to that webpage.... so it's not that the page i am getting contents from is slow.

[schilly]

if you're loading external pages you probably want to use curl. i do anyways for anything external.

 

Also if you switch servers, file_get_contents may not support external urls. by default i'm pretty sure it doesn't. you need to enable the fopen wrappers.

[smerny]

looked at the manual and there was way too much info on curl that didn't really do a good job at explaining what to do... searched google for curl screen scraping and found an example that i modified to fit my need... this is what i'm using now, works much faster. thanks.

 

 

$ch = curl_init() or die(curl_error());
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,"http://services.runescape.com/m=itemdb_rs/viewitem.ws?obj=2355");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$raw=curl_exec($ch) or die(curl_error());
curl_close($ch); 

$newlines = array("\t","\n","\r","\x20\x20","\0","\x0B");

$content = str_replace($newlines, "", html_entity_decode($raw));

$start = strpos($content,'<b>Market price:</b> ')+21;

$end = strpos($content,'</span><span><b>Maximum price:',$start);

$marketprice = substr($content,$start,$end-$start);

echo $marketprice;

[roopurt18]

If you're using PHP5 and have access to it, I'd recommend using HttpRequest instead of cURL.

http://usphp.com/manual/en/book.http.php

 

I primarily use:

http://usphp.com/manual/en/class.httprequest.php

 

It's really just a cURL wrapper, but I find it easy to use. 

[schilly]

nice thanks roopurt18. I'll check that out next time I need to use curl.