How do I link to external images in my WP posts - php

Question

I am scraping a site and putting data in my WP site.
There are lots of images in those posts.
I want that when importing that scraped data into my WP site,
I want to link images into my site directly from that external URL instead of downloading image to my server.
I am grammatically importing scraped data to my site.
Here is that part of adding image
// for image
$ins_q = "INSERT INTO wpxw_posts (post_author, post_date, post_date_gmt, post_content, post_title, post_excerpt, post_status, "
. "comment_status, ping_status,"
. "post_password, post_name, to_ping, pinged, post_modified,post_modified_gmt, post_content_filtered,post_parent,"
. "guid,menu_order,post_type,"
. "post_mime_type,comment_count) VALUES(?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?)";
$sth = $conn->prepare($ins_q);
if (!$sth->execute(array(
$post_author, $date, $date, "", sanitize_title_with_dashes($image_name), "", "inherit", "open", "closed", '',
str_replace(".", "-", $image_name), '', '', $date, $date, '', $post_id,
"http://photos2.zillowstatic.com/p_f/ISdc6hruhctopo0000000000.jpg"
, 0, "attachment", "image/jpeg", 0
))) {
echo "<h1>Error</h1>";
print_r($sth->errorInfo());
exit();
}
}
MY PROBLEM is that when adding external link to image, images do not show on my post. How can I show images from external resources?

Answer 1

// Add Featured Image to Post
$image_url = 'http://s.wordpress.org/style/images/wp-header-logo.png'; // Define the image URL here
$upload_dir = wp_upload_dir(); // Set upload folder
$image_data = file_get_contents($image_url); // Get image data
$filename = basename($image_url); // Create image file name
// Check folder permission and define file location
if( wp_mkdir_p( $upload_dir['path'] ) ) {
$file = $upload_dir['path'] . '/' . $filename;
} else {
$file = $upload_dir['basedir'] . '/' . $filename;
}
// Create the image file on the server
file_put_contents( $file, $image_data );
// Check image file type
$wp_filetype = wp_check_filetype( $filename, null );
// Set attachment data
$attachment = array(
'post_mime_type' => $wp_filetype['type'],
'post_title' => sanitize_file_name( $filename ),
'post_content' => '',
'post_status' => 'inherit'
);
// Create the attachment
$attach_id = wp_insert_attachment( $attachment, $file, $post_id );
// Include image.php
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/image.php');
// Define attachment metadata
$attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $file );
// Assign metadata to attachment
wp_update_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $attach_data );
// And finally assign featured image to post
set_post_thumbnail( $post_id, $attach_id );