Using Authentication And file_get_contents()

Using file_get_contents() to fetch the contents of a file is quite a common practice. This might be just to get the contents of a text file or to get the ImageCache module in Drupal to pre-cache images. The file_get_contents() function can get a local or remote file and is usually run like this.

However, when trying to use this function to communicate with an authenticated server you will see the following error appearing.

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.example.com/test.php): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! 
HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required in test.php on line 4

To get around this issue you will need to pass a third parameter to the file_get_contents() function that causes the function to use a context. This context will pass an additional Authorization header to the server and is created through a function called stream_context_create(). Here is all the code you need to use file_get_contents() in an authenticated manner.

$username = 'username';
$password = 'password';
 
$context = stream_context_create(array(
    'http' => array(
        'header'  => "Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode("$username:$password")
    )
));
$data = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);

The second parameter is for the addition of a flag and is skipped here by using a null value, but false is also applicable. For more information about what flags are available see the file_get_contents() page on the PHP manual.