How to fetch a file with PHP

If you want to fetch a file from another server, PHP can be used.

Example, I want to download the Clickbank Product XML file, also known as the Marketplace feed, from Clickbank and store it on my server.

The Clickbank Marketplace XML feed address is https://accounts.clickbank.com/feeds/marketplace_feed_v2.xml.zip

I can create a PHP file that will fetch it like this:

<?php

$fileToFetch = 'https://accounts.clickbank.com/feeds/marketplace_feed_v2.xml.zip';

$whereToSave = fopen(dirname(__FILE__) . '/marketplace_feed_v2.xml.zip', 'w+');

$curl = curl_init($fileToFetch);

curl_setopt_array($curl, [

CURLOPT_URL     => $fileToFetch,

CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER  => 1,

CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER  => 1,

CURLOPT_FILE    => $whereToSave,

CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 50,

]);

$response = curl_exec($curl);

if ($response === false) {

throw new \Exception('Curl error: ' . curl_error($curl));

}

$response;

?>

Just so you know, you'll need the PHP curl extension installed. On Debian or Ubuntu, you can install it by:

sudo apt-get install php-curl

You'll know you don't have php-curl installed if you get an error like the following:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function curl_init()