Beginner help need for simple PHP script

Question

I'm a complete beginner in php (and a first 'poster' here on SO) and seem to be missing something in a small script that I am doing from a tutorial.

What the script is basically suppose to do is get Ticker names from a hosted txt file on the server and output historical prices fetched from yahoo finance.

Everything seems to be working fine except that the content that i get from the getCSVfile function is incorrect (I get the html from the yahoo error page). The fetched URL is however correct and if I type in the targeted URL manually everything works just fine.

It is probably a basic mistake but can't seem to find it. Seems to be related to '' and ""s.

Many thanks in advance for the help Y

<?php 

include("includes/connect.php");

function createURL($ticker){
    $currentMonth = date('n') - 1;
    $currentDay = date('j');
    $currentYear = date('Y');
    $result = 'http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv? s='.$ticker.'&a=07&b=19&c=2012&d=11&e=08&f=2012 &g=d&ignore=.csv';
    return (string)$result;
}

function getCSVFile($url, $outputFile){
    $content = file_get_contents($url);
    $content = str_replace('Date,Open,High,Low,Close,Volume,Adj Close','',$content);
    $content = trim($content);
   echo $content; /debugging
  file_put_contents($outputFile,$content);
}

//test debugging - this is where the problem seems to be happening - 
//the URL output is correct as is the getCSVfile but the combination of the two doesnt  work properly//

$test = createURL('GOOG');
echo $test;
getCSVFile($test, "memory.txt");

/code continues...

?>

Answer 1

The problem is that your URL does contain a few spaces which do not belong in there:

$result = 'http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv? s='.$ticker.'&a=07&b=19&c=2012&d=11&e=08&f=2012 &g=d&ignore=.csv';
                                                     ^                                               ^

Try

$result = 'http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s='.$ticker.'&a=07&b=19&c=2012&d=11&e=08&f=2012&g=d&ignore=.csv';

instead.

To notice this kind of error, it is always the best way to copy'n'paste your debug output in the browser, not type it in -- otherwise you will often miss these small, obvious errors.

Answer 2

Try using urlencode before returning the URL in your createURL function. So the code of that function would be something like this

function createURL($ticker){
$currentMonth = date('n') - 1;
$currentDay = date('j');
$currentYear = date('Y');
$result = 'http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv? s='.$ticker.'&a=07&b=19&c=2012&d=11&e=08&f=2012 &g=d&ignore=.csv';
return urlencode($result);
}