How to make HTTP call to another address?

I've recently set up some Tomcat/Java/Servlet stuff that provides some high-level functions I wish to make available from PHP. In other words, from PHP, I want to make an HTTP call to an address like: http://mycompany.com/myservlet?request=doSomething&arg1=meat&arg2=potatoes and then use the returned stream of data to service the original PHP request. Clear? I quickly found the PHP HTTP library ( http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.http.php ), but my quick perusal makes me think this is only useful for controlling the HTTP response sent back to the browser making the original PHP request. Can someone help me? FYI: I'm a newbie. Please forgive me if this is an old-hat question. Matt