Retrieving XML from URL with authentication - php

Question

I have been all over the internet trying to find a solution to my specific problem but no luck.
Basically I have a URL that I log into that looks similar to this:
https://some-website.university.edu.au:8781/elements/v4.9/users/
Which will return to the browsers an XML block of text with all of the users.
I am looking to use curl or SimpleXMLElement() or whatever it takes to bring that XML into my php variable and output it.
The closest I feel I have got is:
$username = 'usernameX';
$password = 'passwordX';
$URL = 'https://some-website.university.edu.au:8781/elements/v4.9/users/';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$URL);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30); //timeout after 30 seconds
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username.":".$password);
$result=curl_exec ($ch);
$status_code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE); //get status code
echo $result;
or
$url = 'https://usernameX:passwordX#some-website.university.edu.au:8781/elements/v4.9/users/';
echo $url."<br />";
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($url);
print_r($xml);
I'm not sure if either is close or whether curl is better than SimpleXMLElement() or if one or both just will never work.
I have added a screenshots to show the what is returned on the website. The login screen is just the browser default one. Any help would be amazing. Thanks!
XML Returned on web page

Answer 1

You might be better off using curl imo:
You can try something like this for authentication with curl:
$username = 'admin';
$password = 'mypass';
$server = 'myserver.com';
$context = stream_context_create(array(
'http' => array(
'header' => "Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode("$username:$password")
)
)
);
$data = file_get_contents("http://$server/", false, $context);
$xml=simplexml_load_string($data);
if ($xml === false) {
echo "Failed loading XML: ";
foreach(libxml_get_errors() as $error) {
echo "<br>", $error->message;
}
} else {
print_r($xml);
}

Answer 2

another way to parse xml from remote url. (not tested)
<?php
$username = 'usernameX';
$password = 'passwordX';
$url = 'https://some-website.university.edu.au:8781/elements/v4.9/users/';
$context = stream_context_create(array(
'http' => array(
'header' => "Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode("$username:$password"),
'header' => 'Accept: application/xml'
)
));
$data = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($data);
print_r($xml);
PHP
stream_get_contents — Reads remainder of a stream into a string
file_get_contents — Reads entire file into a string
simplexml_load_string — Interprets a string of XML into an object