Using the file_get_contents method

<?php

// Request Yahoo! REST Web Service using
// file_get_contents. PHP4/PHP5
// Author: Rasmus Lerdorf and Jason Levitt
// February 1, 2006

error_reporting(E_ALL);

$request = 'http://search.yahooapis.com/ImageSearchService/V1/imageSearch?appid=YahooDemo&query=' . urlencode('Al Gore') . '&results=1';

// Make the request
$xml = file_get_contents($request);

// Retrieve HTTP status code
list ($version, $status_code, $msg) = explode(' ', $http_response_header[0], 3);

// Check the HTTP Status code
switch($status_code) {
  case 200:
    // Success
    break;
  case 503:
    die('Your call to Yahoo Web Services failed and returned an HTTP status of 503. That means: Service unavailable. An internal problem prevented us from returning data to you.');
    break;
  case 403:
    die('Your call to Yahoo Web Services failed and returned an HTTP status of 403. That means: Forbidden. You do not have permission to access this resource, or are over your rate limit.');
    break;
  case 400:
    // You may want to fall through here and read the specific XML error
    die('Your call to Yahoo Web Services failed and returned an HTTP status of 400. That means:  Bad request. The parameters passed to the service did not match as expected. The exact error is returned in the XML response.');
    break;
  default:
    die('Your call to Yahoo Web Services returned an unexpected HTTP status of:' . $status_code);
}

// Output the XML
echo htmlspecialchars($xml, ENT_QUOTES);
?>