Rubicon reconciliation API call

rubicon_recon.php

// of course there is actually more to the code than this but here's the relevant part

function getRubiconRecon($date,$freq) {
  $key = "************************************";
  $secret = "************************************";
  $url = "https://api.rubiconproject.com";
  $acct = "*****";
  $request    = "/sellers/api/reports/v1/$acct?columns=Site_Name,Site_ID,Performance_NetworkImps,Performance_FillRate,Traffic_Impressions,Performance_NetworkRevenue,Performance_ECPM,SiteData_KeywordMapped&source=standard&start=$date&end=$date";
  $options = array('timeout' => '30', 'auth' => new Requests_Auth_Basic(array($key, $secret)), 'filename' => 'rubicon_body.txt');
  $headers = array('Accept' => 'application/json', 'Content-Type' => 'application/json');
  
  try {
  	$res = Requests::get($url.$request, $headers, $options);
  } catch (Requests_Exception $e) {
  	$log->log($logfile, 'ERROR -- Caught exception in Rubicon API request: ' . $e->getMessage());
  	// the log message alternates between the following
  	//  cURL error 18: transfer closed with 6981 bytes remaining to read
  	//  cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 29641 milliseconds with 1120 out of 8101 bytes received
  	// however if I check rubicon_body.txt, there is valid JSON there returned from the API.
  	// I would like to be able to access that JSON from a variable without having to read a file on disk.
  	
  	continue;
  }
  
  // do some stuff here with the data received from the API
  
}