I recently upgraded from php4 to php5 and with it came the notice that all my remote php file access no longer worked. I've been doing quite a bit of research into this and I dont seem to have a clear answer as to what is the correct way to include remote urls in php5.
The first example is to include the file this way
<?php
$data = file_get_contents("http://example.com/example.inc.php",0);
echo $data;
?>
The 2nd is this way
<?php
$ch = curl_init("http://example.com/example.inc.php");
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
?>
and 3rd is to set in my php.ini file
allow_url_include = On
allow_url_fopen = On
and use the good old
<?php include_once('http://example.com/example.inc.php');?>
I want to do this right and secure.