Cannot connect to external FTPS server with php - php

Question

I need to extract data from a .gz file which is located on an ftp server. The FTP server works with IP white listing, so I submitted my local IP and my website IP (i used gethostbynameto get the IP) which were both approved.
Locally, I can run this code to reach the file:
$url="ftp://username:password#host/targetfile.gz";
$xml = simplexml_load_file("compress.zlib://$url") or die ("Cannot load file");
This runs perfectly fine and it allows me to extract data from the XML file.
When I run the script on my server however, i'm not getting a connection. I contacted the admin running the ftp server and they told me they only allow FTPS connections.
So, I proceeded with the following code to try and establish a connection:
$conn_id = ftp_ssl_connect($ftp_server);
// login with username and password
$login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user, $ftp_pass);
if (!$login_result) {
die("Cannot login.");
}
echo ftp_pwd($conn_id); // /
// close the ssl connection
ftp_close($conn_id);
This also doesn't connect. I'm new to FTP connections with PHP and FTP in general and i've got no clue on how to proceed from this point.
OpenSSL is enabled.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Edit: These are the error messages:
When I use the top block of code, this occurs:
Warning: simplexml_load_file(): I/O warning : failed to load external
entity
"compress.zlib://username:password#ftp.thehost.com/targetfile.gz"; in
/path/to/my/website/folder/htdocs/mydomain.com/feeds/script.php on
line 13
When I use the bottom block of code, I get this error:
Warning: ftp_login() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given
in /path/to/my/website/folder/htdocs/mydomain.com/feeds/script.php on
line 16 Cannot login.
I do not have access to the log file afaik

Answer 1

I do not think there's much we can help you here.
You do not have a network connectivity between the web server and FTP server.
Note that it does not have to be because the web server has not been white-listed on the FTP server. It's also possible that the web server does not allow outgoing connections.