Example PHP cURL function

gistfile1.php

<?php
// See https://lazycat.org/php-curl.html for license & known issues
// P.S. You'd better have a very good reason for using this instead of http://guzzlephp.org/

function httpGet($url, $ttl = 86400) 
{
  /* Change this or make it an option as appropriate. If you're
   * getting urls that shouldn't be visible to the public, put the
   * cache folder somewhere it can't be accessed from the web
   */
  $cache_path = dirname(__FILE__).'/cache';


  /* Check the cache first - setting ttl to 0 overrides 
   * the check. I'm using crc32() to make URLs safe here; if you're
   * fetching millions of URLs, it might not be different enough to 
   * avoid clashes. If you get collisions, use md5() or something, 
   * and change the sprintf() pattern.
   */
  $cache_file   = sprintf('%s/%08X.dat', $cache_path, crc32($url));
  $cache_exists = is_readable($cache_file);

  /* If the cache is newer than the Time To Live, return it 
   * instead of doing a new request. The default TTL is 1 day.
   */
  if ($ttl && $cache_exists && 
      (filemtime($cache_file) > (time() - $ttl))
     ) 
  {
    return file_get_contents($cache_file);
  }

  /* Need to regenerate the cache. First thing to do here is update
   * the modification time on the cache file so that no one else 
   * tries to update the cache while we're updating it. But first
   * keep the original time for making a conditional request later.
   */
  $modified_time = filemtime($cache_file);
  touch($cache_file);
  clearstatcache();


  /* Set up the cURL pointer. It's important to set a User-Agent 
   * that's unique to you, and provides contact details in case your 
   * script is misbehaving and a server owner needs to contact you. 
   * More than that, it's just the polite thing to do. 
   */
  $c = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 15);
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 
    'ExampleFetcher/0.9  (http://example.com/; bob@example.com)');


  /* If we've got a cache, do the web a favour and make a 
   * conditional HTTP request. What this means is that if the  
   * server supports it, it will tell us if nothing has changed - 
   * this means we can reuse the cache for a while, and the 
   * request is returned faster.
   */
  if ($cache_exists) {
    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_TIMECONDITION, CURL_TIMECOND_IFMODSINCE);
    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_TIMEVALUE, $modified_time);
  }


  /* Make the request and check the result. */
  $content = curl_exec($c);
  $status = curl_getinfo($c, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

  // Document unmodified? Return the cache file
  if ($cache_exists && ($status == 304)) { 
    return file_get_contents($cache_file);
  }

  /* You could be more forgiving of errors here. I've chosen to 
   * fail hard instead, because at least it'll be obvious when 
   * something goes wrong. 
   */
  if ($status != 200) { 
    throw new Exception(sprintf('Unexpected HTTP return code %d', $status));
  }


  /* If everything is fine, save the new cache file, make sure 
   * it's world-readable, and writeable by the server
   */
  file_put_contents($cache_file, $content);
  chmod($cache_file, 0644);
  return $content;
}
?>