Thank you for this bug report. To properly diagnose the problem, we
need a short but complete example script to be able to reproduce
this bug ourselves. 

A proper reproducing script starts with <?php and ends with ?>,
is max. 10-20 lines long and does not require any external 
resources such as databases, etc.

If possible, make the script source available online and provide
an URL to it here. Try avoid embedding huge scripts into the report.

I've created a vastly cut-down version of the script :-

<?php

$headers = "GET /stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml HTTP/1.0\r\nUser-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)\r\nHost: www.ecb.int\r\nAccept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, */*\r\n\r\n";

$URI_PARTS = parse_url('http://www.ecb.int/');

$fp = @fsockopen($URI_PARTS['host'],80,$errno,$errstr,10);

if (!$fp){echo 'Cannot open socket';return;}

fwrite($fp,$headers,strlen($headers));
$results = '';
do {
	$_data = fread($fp, 500000);
	if (strlen($_data) == 0) {
		break;
	}
	$results .= $_data;
} while(true);

fclose($fp);

Mail('gholyoak@courtdean.com','Data Retrieval results',$results);


echo strlen($results);

return;

?>


Dont forget to change the email address !!

To replicate the problem:

1. create a w2k .cmd file to call this script
2. Run the .cmd file as many time as you wish and you should get back an XML doc.
3. create a scheduled task using the .cmd file and run it several times.

You should notice that it works to start with and then fails but you can still run the .cmd file interactively ?

Curious ??

I couldn't reproduce the bug with your code.

Hint: This one-liner works fine too:

$xml=file_get_contents("http://www.ecb.int/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml");

(no need for any fsockopen() stuff at all :)

I cannot understand why it works several times then fails.

It works fine on our DEV server which is behind a proxy server, but fails on the LIV server that has no proxy but has a firewall (Ive turned the firewall off, but still no joy).

There are no entries in the Event viewer to indicate any problem.

Im at a loss but will keep trying and let you know if I come up with something.

Try to use HTTP/1.1, because I think there is no 'Host' in HTTP 1.0.

Maybe the proxy corrects the headers...

Thanks for that.

I've already tried http/1.1 but as Im trying to emulate a browser, 1.1 has too many extra's that I dont want to code for.

I have been investigating this further and it seems to be an issue with the firewall.

It would appear that the interactive web version, i.e from IIS is identified to the firewall as originating from a local IP address (e.g. localhost or 127.0.0.1) but the CLI version via a batch job is identified to the firewall as the physical external IP address.

Im still puzzled as to why it started to work after a reboot and then fail but Im guessing this is a firewall issue.

I will close this report now but thank you for all your assistance to this point.

Not a PHP Bug.