If you ever need to download a HTTP/FTP or any page, try not to use fopen() and fread() functions. They work but will take enormous amounts of time as compared to curl functions. Try doing as follows:
To GET a page using a url
<?
$url=”http://any.url”;
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$store = curl_exec ($ch);
$xml = curl_exec ($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
?>
To POST to a page using values and fields:
<?
$url=”http://any.url”;
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, “fieldname=fieldvalue&fieldname=fieldvalue&”);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$store = curl_exec ($ch);
$content = curl_exec ($ch); # This returns HTML
curl_close ($ch);
?>
For more information, check the curl function on PHP website.