simplexml_load_file error in PHP 5.3 - simplexml

Question

I'm using the following code to read an RSS feed and output the results.
function home_page_parser($feedURL) {
$rss = simplexml_load_file($feedURL);
$i = 0;
echo "<ul>";
foreach ($rss->channel->item as $feedItem) {
$i++;
$myDate = ($feedItem->pubDate);
$dateForm = explode(" ", $myDate);
echo "<li class=\"rss-feed\">".$feedItem->title."<br />" .$feedItem->pubDate. "</li>";
if($i >= 3) break;
echo "</ul>";
}
}
It is working fine on my testing site at Rackspace Cloud running PHP 5.2
On the live site at Media Temple running PHP 5.3, I get the following errors:
Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: http:// wrapper is disabled in the server configuration by allow_url_fopen=0 in /.../html/includes/functions.php on line 39
Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://www.chinaknowledge.com/Newswires/RSS_News/RSS_News.xml) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /.../html/includes/functions.php on line 39
Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://www.chinaknowledge.com/Newswires/RSS_News/RSS_News.xml" in /.../html/includes/functions.php on line 39
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /.../html/includes/functions.php on line 44
Line 39 is this:
$rss = simplexml_load_file($feedURL);
What am I doing wrong or needs to change to work on 5.3?

Answer 1

The error is pretty descriptive dont you think?
http:// wrapper is disabled in the server configuration by
allow_url_fopen=0
You will need to edit the PHP configuration file and change the configuration allow_url_fopen. If you cant do this directly try ini_set()
Edit: As #evanmcd pointed out in the comments, this configuration can only be set in php.ini. PHP documentation reference.

Answer 2

This error comes due to "http:// wrapper is disabled in the server configuration by allow_url_fopen=0" .For avoiding this issue we need to override this setting to On instead off.In my view most of shared hosting servers do not allow you to do these setting through either ini_set('allow_url_fopen', 'on'); or htaccess overriding.So instead of trying these methods I suggest a way to fetch that feed is as follows.Using CURL we need to fetch the content of feed xml to a variable.Then process our simplexml file operations .
Example
$feed ='http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=mytwittername';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $feed);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
// get the result of http query
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$xml = simplexml_load_file($output);

Answer 3

If you are not allowed to edit php.ini in server you can use curl to get xml and read xml stirng as below.
function home_page_parser($feedURL) {
$rss = simplexml_load_file(curlXML($feedURL);
$i = 0;
echo "<ul>";
foreach ($rss->channel->item as $feedItem) {
$i++;
$myDate = ($feedItem->pubDate);
$dateForm = explode(" ", $myDate);
echo "<li class=\"rss-feed\">".$feedItem->title."<br />" .$feedItem->pubDate. "</li>";
if($i >= 3) break;
echo "</ul>";
}
}
function curlXML($url){
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
// get the result of http query
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $output;
}

Answer 4

ini_set("allow_url_fopen", 1);
This will set allow url open = On in php.ini file but you need to restart php in easyphp or xamp or wamp or in hosting.