fopen() very slow when used in Joomla

Question

I'm writing a authentication plugin for Joomla. The plugin is calling an external site to verify the username and password.

The code works, but my problem is that when I'm calling fopen() from the Joomla plugin, it takes a very long time (63 seconds) for it to respond.

When running the same code on the server (but not through Joomla), the fopen() call only takes 0.1 second.

Is there any settings that Joomla can have changed, that makes the fopen() call taking so long? Or is there any other function that I should use instead of fopen()? (I have tried file_get_contents() but with the same result)

Below is the code I'm using (based on this article: http://wezfurlong.org/blog/2006/nov/http-post-from-php-without-curl/) (I don't have cURL installed so that is not an option.)

$username = "admin";
$password = "1234" ;
$verb = 'GET'
$url = "https://xxx.xxx.xxx/api.phtml/login" ;

$params = array("username"=>$username, "password"=>$password);    
$params = http_build_query($params);
$url .= '?' . $params;

$cparams = array( 'http' => array(  'method' => $verb,
                                    'ignore_errors' => true ) );

$context = stream_context_create($cparams);
$fp = fopen($url, 'rb', false, $context);

The allow_url_fopen is enabled.

Joomla! Version: Joomla! 2.5.27 Stable
PHP Version: 5.2.6-1+lenny10

I have been struggeling with this for three days now, so any help would be very appreciated!

Thanks!

Answer 1

Usually when we have a problem with fopen, we switch to curl and that solves the problem. In any case, check your .htaccess and your local php.ini (or .user.ini) files for the Joomla site for any restrictions on fopen.