PHP Curl returning inconsistent data for XML feed

I'm working on a XML reader and am running into a odd issue with a few feeds. Using CURL or even file_get_contents the feeds load as binary data more often than real data. Whenever I load the feed in a browser it looks fine.

The specific feed is http://www.winnipegsun.com/home/rss.xml

The code I am using is

$string = file_get_contents("http://www.winnipegsun.com/h开发者_如何学Come/rss.xml");
var_dump( $string );

The response is gzipped:

If you look at the HTTP headers: Content-Encoding: gzip

Unzip it with PHP:

gzinflate(substr($string, 10));

http://php.net/manual/en/function.gzinflate.php

Hope that helps... cheers

You should be able to send an empty Accept-Encoding header to the server and then it should not send the content gzipped or return a Not Acceptable response:

$string = file_get_contents(
    "http://www.winnipegsun.com/home/rss.xml",
    FALSE,
    stream_context_create(
        array(
            'http' => array(
                'method'  => "GET",
                'headers' => 'Accept-Encoding:\r\n'
            )
        )
    )
);
var_dump($string);

I am not sure the webserver is configured correctly though, because it wouldnt respond to that with the uncompressed feed, even when adding Cache Control headers telling to it not send a cached response. Oddly enough, just doing

$string = file_get_contents("http://www.winnipegsun.com/home/rss.xml?".time());

worked out of the box. And you can also send a POST request.