pulling content from a URL

I'm writing a script that needs to put the contents of an external URL into a variable. I need to include some sort of error checking that will kill this request if for some reason the URL request hangs for more then 15 seconds. In researching this, I think the correct function to use is fsockopen, but I can't seem to get it to work. Can someone verify if fsockopen is the best way to grab an external URL, but kill the request if it hangs for a certain amount of time ... and if so, show me some sample code on how to place this URL's contents into a variable that I can then parse. The URL will be hard coded into the script, so I don't need a lot of error checking to insure correct URL format, etc. Thanks, Nicholas Miller Intercast Media, Inc. 229 19th Ave. Suite 4 San Francisco, CA 94121 415-379-9500 415-520-9501 (fax) nick@intercastmedia.com