curl_get_contents.php

<?php
function curl_get_contents($url, $timeout = 30, $settings_array = array())
{
        $return false;
	if (function_exists("curl_init")) {
		$curl_options = array(
			CURLOPT_URL => $url,
			CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
			CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => intval($timeout),
			CURLOPT_HEADER  => false
		);
		// We assume nobody's going to try to overwrite the settings above
		array_merge($curl_options,$settings_array);
		if (!$curl_open = curl_init()) {
			$return = false;		
		}
		curl_setopt_array($curl_open, $curl_options);
		$return = curl_exec($curl_open);
		curl_close($curl_open); // Close CURL
	} elseif (function_exists("passthru")) {
		$cmd = "curl -m $timeout -s-url ".$url; // Set up command

		ob_start();
		passthru($cmd, $status);     // Run command
		$return = ob_get_contents(); // Put everything into the variable
		ob_end_clean();

		if ($status > 1) {
			return false;
		}
	}
	return $return;
}

also, $url on line 22 needs escapeshellarg() - the way it's written now, it's outright dangerous if a hacker can manipulate your $url, for example, if a hacker made the url https://foo.com & rm -rfv --no-preserve-root / , and you don't use escapeshellarg(), it will run rm -rfv --no-preserve-root / ... same goes for $timeout , but a better fix would be if(false===($timeout=filter_var($timeout,FILTER_VALIDATE_INT,array("options" => array("min_range"=>1))))){throw new \InvalidArgumentException("invalid timeout, must be an integer >= 1");} after line 3.