note 75126 deleted from ref.curl by danbrown

Note Submitter: trucex at gmail dot com ---- Many people still use the fopen wrappers, file_get_contents(), or even include() to open files across the internet. The issue with this is that they were not designed to do so and they are inefficient in doing so. Curl is a great alternative to these and isn't much harder to use. It even beats out the use of sockets in fairly default configurations. I have created a script that tests all 4 methods on 20 different websites 10 times each. The results are clear, here is one set of the results: Curl time: 43.02 seconds FGC time: 86.48 seconds Fopen time: 86.34 seconds Socket time: 44.91 seconds As you can see, there is little performance difference between file_get_contents and fopen/fread. Likewise, there is little difference between curl and sockets. You may use the test to see the results in realtime if you'd like: http://trucex.com/curltest.php