This is a class very close to the Ruby version to get text.

<?php
class httprequest {

    function httprequest() {
    }

	function get($url) {
		if (substr($url,0,7) != "http://"){
			$url = 'http://'.$url;
		}
		$html = implode('', file($url));
		return $html;
	}

	function post() {

	}

}
?>