$c = curl_init('https://yourURLhere.com');
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
//curl_setopt(... other options you want...)
$html = curl_exec($c);
if (curl_error($c))
die(curl_error($c));
// Get the status code
$status = curl_getinfo($c, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($c);
Since PHP 5.1.0, file_put_contents() supports writing piece-by-piece by passing a stream-handle as the $data parameter:
file_put_contents("Tmpfile.zip", fopen("http://someurl/file.zip", 'r'));
From the manual:
If data [that is the second argument] is a stream resource, the remaining buffer of that stream will be copied to the specified file. This is similar with using stream_copy_to_stream().
(Thanks Hakre.)