file_get_contents and error codes

Question

I'm downloading a file from the web with file_get_contents. Sometimes I get 503 Service Unavailable or 404 Not Found.

Warning: file_get_contents(http://somewhereoverinternets.com) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 503 Service Unavailable in somesourcefile.php on line 20

How can I get this error code - 503 ? 404, 200? To make the process for these cases.

Answer 1

Try curl instead:

function get_data($url)
{
  $ch = curl_init();
  $timeout = 5;
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout);
  $data = curl_exec($ch);

  if(!curl_errno($ch)){ 
     return $data;
  }else{
    echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch); 
  }
curl_close($ch);
}