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POWhich characters in urls cause file_get_contents / curl to fail?
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  1. POWhich characters in urls cause file_get_contents / curl to fail?
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    copied!<p><strong>EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION:</strong></p> <p>I would like to know <em>which</em> characters in a url cause file_get_contents / curl to fail.</p> <p>In the example below, the only character which causes a problem is the space, so the best thing for me to do would simply be to <code>str_replace</code> spaces in the url with <code>%20</code>. Are there any other characters which also cause it to fail? If so, what are they? Is there a function which does this replacement for me?</p> <hr> <p><strong>ORIGINAL PHRASING:</strong></p> <p>I'd like to be able to download an arbitrary file by its URL, chosen by the user, and have access to it as a string. My initial reaction was:</p> <pre><code>$str = file_get_contents($url); </code></pre> <p>However, this fails on URLs like:</p> <p><code>http://i.ebayimg.com/t/2-WAY-PHOTO-FRAME-KEY-BOX-SHABBY-CHIC-STYLE-/00/s/NjAwWDYwMA==/$(KGrHqRHJDoE-PBe-SSLBPlrnIYb Q~~60_35.JPG</code></p> <p>Next, I tried <code>cURL</code>:</p> <pre><code>function file_get_contents_curl($url) { $ch = curl_init($url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); $result = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); return $result; } </code></pre> <p>However, for the same URL, cURL fails with "Invalid URL".</p> <p>I've read on a number of questions here that when downloading from URLs with arbitrary characters in them, urlencode must be used. However, this results in:</p> <p><code>http%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.com%2Ft%2F2-WAY-PHOTO-FRAME-KEY-BOX-SHABBY-CHIC-STYLE-%2F00%2Fs%2FNjAwWDYwMA%3D%3D%2F%24%28KGrHqRHJDoE-PBe-SSLBPlrnIYb+Q%7E%7E60_35.JPG</code></p> <p>which doesn't fetch either, using either method, I think because now it thinks it's a local file. What do I need to do to be able to fetch an arbitrary url?</p>
 

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