Replacing simplexml_load_file with PHP cURL

The PHP XML data loading function simplexml_load_file has a very short timeout which apparently isn’t controllable (or documented). Replacing it with cURL and simplexml_load_string is relatively straightforward, but for reference:

Original simplexml_load_file

<?php
  $path = 'http://example.org/path/to/xml';
  $xml === False on failure
  $xml = @simplexml_load_file($path);
?>

Replaced with cURL and simplexml_load_string

<?php
  $path = 'http://example.org/path/to/xml';
  $ch = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $path);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 15);
  $returned = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);
  // $xml === False on failure
  $xml = simplexml_load_string($returned);
?>

Oh PHP, why do you? I don’t even.

Tags: php programming