file_get_contents() returns garbled data

Question

I am trying to use the SO API (eg: http://api.stackoverflow.com/1.0/users/3) to get some data:

<?php

$data = file_get_contents('http://api.stackoverflow.com/1.0/users/3');
echo $data;

?>

But the returned contents are garbled. I tested it on a couple different servers, including http://codepad.viper-7.com/9GFvsM. Is it my code or the API?

Answer 1

The response is gzipped. I recommend you use curl and set CURLOPT_ENCODING to gzip.