file_get_contents - failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found - php

Question

I'm having some weird problems with file_get_contents after moving my site to a new domain. I had to set up a new domain and IP address (using Plesk) to get a new ssl certificate working. Now my file_get_contents calling a script on the same domain is giving me this:
failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
If I call the same url using file_get_contents on another server it works fine, and if I call www.google.com from the server thats failing that works, so it only seems to be if I call a url on the same sever!
I have a feeling it might have something to do with having two IPs with two different ssl certificates on the one server, when i file_get_contents / (index page) of the server from the server I get the plesk 'this is a new domain' page so its like apache isnt looking up the right virtual host when its called from its own sever.
To clarify (hopefully!):
On the server hosting the domain:
file_get_contents('https://mydomain.com?limit=4&offset=0&s_date=2012-02-05&e_date=2012-03-13&order=release_date&dir=desc&cid=12');
gives "failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found"
file_get_contents('http://www.google.com');
works correctly
On another server:
file_get_contents('https://mydomain.com?limit=4&offset=0&s_date=2012-02-05&e_date=2012-03-13&order=release_date&dir=desc&cid=12');
works fine.
I have tried turning ssl off and I still get the same problem.

Answer 1

I've had this problem too, when I working on a little test server at home. The domain name is resolved to your external IP address, and a request is sent. But because the request is coming from inside your network, the router doesn't recognise it as a normal request. It probably has a web interface for configuring it, and tries to return a page from its own management system, which is then not found at the path you specified.
In that case, I was working on a Windows PC, and I could solve it by adding the domain I was testing to my hosts file, specifying 127.0.0.1 as the IP-address (or the IP-address of the server, if it is another machine within the same network). In Linux there should be a similar solution, I think.
The problem isn't PHP or your server, but your router.

Answer 2

If you just need to handle the warning when the URL is not found (as I did), you may just do this to turn Warnings into Exceptions:
set_error_handler(
function ($err_severity, $err_msg, $err_file, $err_line, array $err_context) {
// do not throw an exception if the #-operator is used (suppress)
if (error_reporting() === 0) return false;
throw new ErrorException( $err_msg, 0, $err_severity, $err_file, $err_line );
},
E_WARNING
);
try {
$contents = file_get_contents($your_url);
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo $e->getMessage();
}
restore_error_handler();
Solution based on this thread/question.

Answer 3

Most hosting provides now block the furl_open parameter which allows you to use file_get_contents() to load data from an external url.
You can use CURL or a PHP client library like Guzzle

Answer 4

Try to do this :
file_get_contents('https://mydomain.com?'.urlencode('limit=4&offset=0&s_date=2012-02-05&e_date=2012-03-13&order=release_date&dir=desc&cid=12'));

Answer 5

I got the same error in CodeIgniter 3. I was doing like this
file_get_contents(base_url('database.json'));
and then this
file_get_contents(site_url('database.json'));
My problem get resolved after I changed it to this
file_get_contents(__DIR__.'/database.php');
Reason behind this was, I was trying to get the internal resource from external url which these methods base_url and site_url return. While __DIR__ return internal url.