Using CURL to Fetch External Links (Alternative to file_get_contents)

For fetching external links on a specific page, the file_get_contents function is typically employed. However, when the server you're using doesn't support this function, CURL can serve as a viable alternative.

To implement CURL, you can utilize the following code:

function file_get_contents_curl($url) {
    $ch = curl_init();

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);

    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    return $data;
}

// Usage Example
echo file_get_contents_curl('http://google.com');

But in cases where this code returns a blank page, it's likely that enabling URL redirection is necessary. To address this issue, modify the code in the following manner:

function file_get_contents_curl($url) {
    $ch = curl_init();

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);       

    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    return $data;
}