SimpleXML - I/O warning : failed to load external entity - php

Question

I'm trying to create a small application that will simply read an RSS feed and then layout the info on the page.
All the instructions I find make this seem simplistic but for some reason it just isn't working. I have the following
include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/rss.php');
$feed = file_get_contents('http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/0/football/rss.xml?edition=int');
$items = simplexml_load_file($feed);
That's it, it then breaks on the third line with the following error
Error: [2] simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xm
The rest of the XML file is shown.
I have turned on allow_url_fopen and allow_url_include in my settings but still nothing.
I've tried multiple feeds that all end up with the same result?
I'm going mad here

Answer 1

simplexml_load_file() interprets an XML file (either a file on your disk or a URL) into an object. What you have in $feed is a string.
You have two options:
Use file_get_contents() to get the XML feed as a string, and use e simplexml_load_string():
$feed = file_get_contents('...');
$items = simplexml_load_string($feed);
Load the XML feed directly using simplexml_load_file():
$items = simplexml_load_file('...');

Answer 2

You can also load the content with cURL, if file_get_contents insn't enabled on your server.
Example:
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,"http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/0/football/rss.xml?edition=int");
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$items = simplexml_load_string($output);

Answer 3

this also works:
$url = "http://www.some-url";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$xmlresponse = curl_exec($ch);
$xml=simplexml_load_string($xmlresponse);
then I just run a forloop to grab the stuff from the nodes.
like this:`
for($i = 0; $i < 20; $i++) {
$title = $xml->channel->item[$i]->title;
$link = $xml->channel->item[$i]->link;
$desc = $xml->channel->item[$i]->description;
$html .="<div><h3>$title</h3>$link<br />$desc</div><hr>";
}
echo $html;
***note that your node names will differ, obviously..and your HTML might be structured differently...also your loop might be set to higher or lower amount of results.

Answer 4

$url = 'http://legis.senado.leg.br/dadosabertos/materia/tramitando';
$xml = file_get_contents("xml->{$url}");
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url);