PHP XML Parsing Fails - php

Question

I have a php script that reads RSS feed and displays the items on the page:
<?php
function getFeed($feed_url) {
$content = file_get_contents($feed_url);
$x = new SimpleXmlElement($content);
$j=0;
foreach($x->channel->item as $entry) {
if ($i <5){
echo "<li>
<a href='$entry->link' title='$entry->title'>" .
$entry->title . "</a><br/>
<span style='color: 444444;'>".$entry->description."
</span>..<a href='$entry->link' title='$entry->title'>
<b>more</b></a>
</li>";
}$i +=1;
}
}
getFeed("http://example.org/feed/");
?>
It works well and displays the RSS item with the links in it. The issue is when the rss feed is down or becomes 0byte size file and it does not show anything. Is there a way to check if the file exists and not empty and make this script fail gracefully way before the server times out?

Answer 1

use curl function:
function getFeed($feed_url) {
// GET request
$handle = curl_init($feed_url);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($handle);
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($handle, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if($httpCode != 200 || empty($response)) {
echo "feed url not found or missed";
exit;
}
curl_close($handle);
// also catch error in xml
try {
$x = new SimpleXmlElement($response);
catch (Exception $e){
echo 'XML not valid';
exit;
}
// rest of function
}

Answer 2

On failure file_get_contents returns false, you can check if an error happened and exit.
$content = file_get_contents($feed_url);
if (content === false) return;
$x = new SimpleXmlElement($content);

Answer 3

You could check what you get in $content. Like if it is empty or doesn't start with a xml header you just stop.