Browser Authentication

[RabPHP]

Greetings,

 

I need to write a script which will pass paramters to another web page which will then return an XML result. I then loop through the XML data to get the relevant data and use that data to reform some Links.

 

I need some guidance on a few items.

 

1)  The script is password protected with a password, how can I auto-authenticate and pass a username and password to the browser automatically?  This script will run on the backend so there will be no user involvement.

 

2) Once I am authenticated, can I simply use fopen to get this page?

 

3) If yes to the above, can I then use simpleXML() to loop through the data to find the relevant pieces?

 

Any ideas greatly appreciated.