Help w/ php calling another website

[rodin]

Hello everyone,
  Just wondering if this were possible to do... Right now, I have a script that uses SigmaChat for my bulletin board, and it queries the remote server.. It works just great --- except when their server is offline.  This is my CURRENT php script called via cron every 5 minutes:

[code=php:0]
<?php include("http://client0.sigmachat.com/scwho.pl?id=xxxxxx&subroom=0&boldadmin=1&comma=1&countonly=0&chatbg=000000&chatusr=FFFFFF&subroomcolor=FFFFFF&chatadmusr=00FFFF&nousermsg=<smallfont>There+are+currently+no+users+in+chat.<%2Fsmallfont>"); ?>
[/code]

What i'm looking to do, is basically this:
If return value is sucessful, then write the contents to > test.html
if cannot connect to remote server, write "Chat Information Temporarily Unavailable" to >test.html

I currently call the scripts via cron by doing this:
*/5 * * * * root /usr/local/bin/php /home/user1/maint/numchat.php > /home/user1/maint/chat/numchat.html

Can anyone supply any help on getting this completed? Many thanks!

[rodin]

thoughts anyone?

[Mr_Pancakes]

im not quite sure what the result of that scipt you're calling is. but if you store that result in a variable you could write that value to your test.html doc by using the fopen(); fwrite(); and fclose(); functions.

[code]
$myFile = "test.html";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");

$stringData = "Your contents.\n"; // where your contents are from that script you're calling.
fwrite($fh, $stringData);

$stringData = "Even more contents.\n"; // might need to append your contents while processing your data.
fwrite($fh, $stringData);

fclose($fh);
[/code]
results in test.html looking like:

Your contents.
Even more contents.