php file_get_contents not working on real server! does work on localhost?

Question

hey guys, i developed a website on my local apache setup on my mac. I'm using two requests to foreign domains. One goes out to geoplugin.net to get the current geolocation. This works just fine on my local setup. However when I transfer the files to my real server the website prints the following:

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.geoplugin.net/php.gp?ip=185.43.32.341) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden in /home/.sites/74/site484/web/testsite/wp-content/themes/test/header.php on line 241

what can I do here? What am I doing wrong?

Furthermore I'm using a curl request on my website which doesn't retrieve data as well. Both works fine on my local mamp setup.

any ideas?

Answer 1

That is because geoPlugin is limited to 120 lookups per minute. http://www.geoplugin.com/premium

So, any web-site feature based on this solution can be damaged suddenly.

I would recommend to use both www.geoplugin.net/json.gp?ip={ip} and freegeoip.net/json/{ip} . And check if first one returns null (means that limit already reached) then use another one.

Answer 2

You need to create an account at geoplugin.com and subscribe your domain to use the webservice without limitation, then you will stop to receive de 403 forbidden error. Don't worry about costs, it's a free service, i'm using it in three sites.

Answer 3

HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden 

means you are not allowed to access this files! Try to add an user agent header.

Answer 4

The server responds with an "403 FORBIDDEN" status code. So file_get_contents() works fine, but the server you are trying to access (or a proxy or something in between) dont allow it.

This can have many reasons. For example (like the comment of the question) you are banned, or blocked (because of to much requests), or something.

Answer 5

try to urlencode the query string.

also I would recommend using curl extension.