You want to open a file that's accessible to you via HTTP or FTP.
$fh = fopen('http://www.example.com/robots.txt','r') or die($php_errormsg);
When fopen( ) is passed a filename that begins with
http://, it retrieves the given page with an
HTTP/1.0 GET request (although a
Host: header is also passed along to deal with virtual hosts). Only the
body of the reply can be accessed using the file handle, not the headers. Files
can be read, not written, via HTTP.
When fopen( ) is passed a filename that begins with
ftp://, it returns a pointer to the specified
file, obtained via passive mode FTP. You can open files via FTP for either
reading or writing, but not both.
To open URLs that require a username and a password with
fopen( ), embed the authentication information in the URL like this:
$fh = fopen('ftp://username:password@ftp.example.com/pub/Index','r');
$fh = fopen('http://username:password@www.example.com/robots.txt','r');
Opening remote files with fopen( ) is implemented via a PHP feature called the URL fopen wrapper. It's enabled by default but is disabled by setting allow_url_fopen to off in your php.ini or web server configuration file. If you can't open remote files with fopen( ), check your server configuration.
