Alternative to function sendToHost() that will handle https - php

Question

I've been using a function called sendToHost that has worked for pinging a server with a GET string and returning a response.
# Example of GET string:
# sub.domain.com/api.php?a=1&b=2&c=3
$var = sendToHost('sub.domain.com','get','/api.php','a=1&b=2&c=3');
However it won't handle sending to a Secure Server (https).
Does anyone know of a php function alternative to sendToHost?
Here's the SendToHost code:
/* sendToHost
* ~~~~~~~~~~
* Params:
* $host - Just the hostname. No http:// or /path/to/file.html portions
* $method - get or post, case-insensitive
* $path - The /path/to/file.html part
* $data - The query string, without initial question mark
* $useragent - If true, 'MSIE' will be sent as the User-Agent (optional)
*
* Examples:
* sendToHost('www.google.com','get','/search','q=php_imlib');
* sendToHost('www.example.com','post','/some_script.cgi',
* 'param=First+Param&second=Second+param');
*/
function sendToHost($host,$method,$path,$data,$useragent=0)
{
// Supply a default method of GET if the one passed was empty
if (empty($method))
$method = 'GET';
$method = strtoupper($method);
$fp = fsockopen($host,80);
if ($method == 'GET')
$path .= '?' . $data;
fputs($fp, "$method $path HTTP/1.1\r\n");
fputs($fp, "Host: $host\r\n");
fputs($fp, "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n");
if ($method == 'POST')
fputs($fp, "Content-length: " . strlen($data) . "\r\n");
if ($useragent)
fputs($fp, "User-Agent: MSIE\r\n");
fputs($fp, "Connection: close\r\n\r\n");
if ($method == 'POST')
fputs($fp, $data);
while (!feof($fp))
$buf .= fgets($fp,128);
fclose($fp);
return $buf;
}
Thanks.

Answer 1

Have you tried using curl? It supports ssl and works well under GNU/Linux..