How to get remote webpage content with drupal http request?

Question

Would love to see some examples on getting remote webpage content with drupal http request. I have plenty of examples easily with Google with curl, but yet to find one with this drupal function.

Also, would CURL be better for getting remote content?

Answer 1

First, you can read the documentation about drupal_http_request() its pretty well documented and it will help you.

But for simple application, you can just do it like that.

<?php
$result = drupal_http_request('http://google.com/');
if (in_array( $result->code, array(200, 304))) {
  // Use $result->data for the content
}
else {
  // Error $result->code
}

// Also you can see all content from $result with
// if you had installed Devel Module and enable it
// dsm($result)
// or simply like that drupal_set_message('<pre>' . print_r($result, 1) . '</pre>');

Answer 2

You could also try using the Webclient module (for D7). Here is a quote about it (from the module's project page):

This is a library module. It provides no out of the box functionality other then providing an API that other modules can use.

The Webclient API is seperated into three major components:

• Webclient
• Webclient Formatters
• Webclient Proxy

All of the above components were translated to seperate modules so that developers can create a dependency with the functionality they need.

Answer 3

Im using this code without any problem.

$base_url = 'http://route to Ws';
$data = array(
  'key' => 'foo';
  'mail' => $mail,
);

$data = drupal_json_encode($data);
$options = array(
'headers' => array(
  'Content-Type' => 'application/json',
),
'method' => 'POST',
'data' => $data
);
$response = drupal_http_request($base_url, $options);
$data = json_decode($response->data);
// Check if login was successful
if ($response->status == 'valid' {
return TRUE;
}