Copy vs Curl to save external file at my server - php

Question

Which way is fastest to save external file to my server. why and how ?
Using Curl :
$ch = curl_init();
$fp = fopen ($local_file, 'w+');
$ch = curl_init($remote_file);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 50);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, "");
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
Using Copy:
copy($extFile, "report.csv");

Answer 1

it mostly depends on the protocol (for instance, if it was a local file, copy() would be faster), but since you're saying "remote file", curl will probably be faster. you're using CURLOPT_ENCODING and CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, i guess that means it's transferred over http, where curl is generally much faster than copy, for at least 2 reasons:
1: PHP's fopen http wrappers doesn't use compression, but when you set CURLOPT_ENCODING to emptystring here, you tell curl to use compression if possible. (and while it depends on how libcurl is compiled, gzip and deflate compression is usually compiled in with libcurl.)
2: copy() keeps reading from the socket until the remote server closes the connection, which may be much later than when the file is completely downloaded. meanwhile, curl will only read until it has read bytes equal to the Content-Length:-http header, then close the connection itself, which is often much faster than stalling on read() until the remote server closes the connection (which copy() does, but curl_exec() doesn't.)
but the only way to know for sure ofc, TIAS.
$starttime=microtime(true);
$ch = curl_init();
$fp = fopen ($local_file, 'w+');
$ch = curl_init($remote_file);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 50);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, "");
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
echo "used ".(microtime(true)-$starttime)." seconds.\n";
vs
$starttime=microtime(true);
copy($extFile, "report.csv");
echo "used ".(microtime(true)-$starttime)." seconds.\n";
gives you roughly microsecond precision (IEEE 754 double floating point precision probably corrupts it somewhat, but probably not enough to matter.)