Want to use cURL instead of SimpleXML_load_file() - php

Question

Using below script I can parse API data successfully.
$xml_report_daily=simplexml_load_file("https://api.sitename.com/api/reports/api_get.asp?User=00012345&Key=abcdefghijklmnop&fromDate=11/12/2014&toDate=12/12/2014&mid=25");
foreach ($xml_report_daily as $report_daily):
$trans_id=$report_daily->TRANSID;
$trans_id=$report_daily->MID;
$trans_id=$report_daily->EXT;
$trans_id=$report_daily->USER;
endforeach;
XML data are something like this:
<DATABASE>
<RECORD>
<TRANSID>1348818</TRANSID>
<MID/>
<EXT>0</EXT>
<USER>00012345</USER>
</RECORD>
.
.
.
so on...
</DATABASE>
But I want to use cURL instead of simplexml_load_file. So I used below script but it is not giving any result data.
$url = "https://api.sitename.com/api/reports/api_get.asp?User=00012345&Key=abcdefghijklmnop&fromDate=11/12/2014&toDate=12/12/2014&mid=25";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
$xml = curl_exec($ch);
echo $xml;
Please let me know what I am missing or doing wrong.
Thank you,

Answer 1

Ok, here is my complete answer and hope it will be useful to others.
I used 2 methods to read XML data from specific link.
Method# 1 : Using simplexml_load_file() - allow_url_fopen should be ON on hosting server for this method to work. This method is working fine both on my local as well as actual server.
$xml_report_daily=simplexml_load_file("https://api.sitename.com/api/reports/api_get.asp?User=00012345&Key=abcdefghijklmnop&fromDate=11/12/2014&toDate=12/12/2014&mid=25");
foreach ($xml_report_daily as $report_daily):
$trans_id=$report_daily->TRANSID;
$m_id=$report_daily->MID;
$ext_id=$report_daily->EXT;
$user_id=$report_daily->USER;
echo $trans_id." ".$m_id." ".$ext_id." ".$user_id."<br/>";
endforeach;
Method# 2 : Using cURL - After doing as suggested here, now this method too is working fine both on my local as well as actual server.
$url = "https://api.sitename.com/api/reports/api_get.asp?User=00012345&Key=abcdefghijklmnop&fromDate=11/12/2014&toDate=12/12/2014&mid=25";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
$xml = curl_exec($ch);
$xml_report_daily = simplexml_load_string($xml);
foreach ($xml_report_daily as $report_daily):
$trans_id=$report_daily->TRANSID;
$m_id=$report_daily->MID;
$ext_id=$report_daily->EXT;
$user_id=$report_daily->USER;
echo $trans_id." ".$m_id." ".$ext_id." ".$user_id."<br/>";
endforeach;
When using cURL, I was getting no result data so paul-crovella suggested me to check error. so I used below script and I found that I was trying to acess https (SSL certificate) data as also mentioned by Raffy Cortez
if(curl_exec($ch) === false)
{ echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch); }
else
{ echo 'Operation completed without any errors'; }
To resolve this https (SSL certificate) related issue, here is very very helpful link and you can use any of methods mentioned there as per your necessity.
HTTPS and SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed, CA is OK
Thank you,

Answer 2

You are calling https URL in your cURL, you need to use
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);