Get title attribute form a URL via PHP curl

get-title.md

Currently, whenever I reply to or like a link the source URL displays. I've found a really sturdy way to parse content titles, but the performance is absolutely abysmal. Wicked wicked wicked slow. I think it may be something to do with how I'm invoking the function. I'll keep poking at it, though, since it makes for a much better presentation.

function url_get_title($url)
    {
    if (!function_exists('curl_init'))
        {
        die('CURL is not installed!');
        }
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $output = curl_exec($ch);
    
    // get the code of request
    $httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    curl_close($ch);
    
    // FAIL
    if ($httpCode == 400) return $url;
    
    // SUCCEED!
    if ($httpCode == 200)
        {
        $str = file_get_contents($url);
        if (strlen($str) > 0)
            {
            $str = trim(preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $str)); // supports line breaks inside <title>
            preg_match("/\<title\>(.*)\<\/title\>/i", $str, $title); // ignore case
            return $title[1];
            }
        }
    }

Pass the function a URL and you'll get the <title> attribute back unless curl fails for some reason (looking at you every Squarespace site ever), then you just get the URL back again.