[..] > 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 [..] stream_set_timeout should be what you're looking for. might look like this: <?php $fp = fsockopen("www.example.com", 80); if (!$fp) { echo "Unable to open\n"; } else { fwrite($fp, "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"); stream_set_timeout($fp, 2); $res = fread($fp, 2000); $info = stream_get_meta_data($fp); fclose($fp); if ($info['timed_out']) { echo 'Connection timed out!'; } else { echo $res; } } ?> -- from the manual: http://us4.php.net/manual/en/function.stream-set-timeout.php $res will hold the first 2,000 bytes of the result. socket blocking would be another way, but the above one looks like exactly what you're looking for -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php