I am using Solr and have the following query which works fine from my browser:
http://www.someipaddress.com:8983/solr/select?q=*&fq=shopid:40&start=0&rows=18&fq=manufacturer:"Bausch+%26+Lomb"
In part of the return xml I see:
<str>manufacturer:"Bausch & Lomb"</str>
However when I try and get the above url using simplexml_load_file like this:
$xml = simplexml_load_file("http://127.0.0.1:8983/solr/select?q=*&fq=shopid:40&start=0&rows=18&fq=manufacturer:\"Bausch+%26+Lomb\"");
I get no results because Solr is being passed the manufacturer string that looks like this (from print_r):
[str] => Array ( [0] => shopid:40 [1] => manufacturer:"Bausch+%26+Lomb" )
So when I am doing the query through the browser I pass in %26 but it deals with it correctly in the query. But when I use simplexml_load_file it remains as %26 and so the query fails.
Try:
simplexml_load_file(rawurlencode('http://127.0.0.1:8983/solr/select?q=*&fq=shopid:40&start=0&rows=18&fq=manufacturer:"Bausch' .urlencode('&'). 'Lomb"'))
See note on file parameter: http://php.net/manual/en/function.simplexml-load-file.php