Geocoding behind a proxy

The official PHP/MySQL Google Maps Geocoding example uses simplexml_load_file that doesn’t handle a proxy so if your script is behind a proxy, you can’t use it.

The problem can be overcome by using stream_context_create and file_get_contents as described in the following snippet:

$request_url = $base_url . "&q=" . urlencode($address);

$params = array (
  'http' => array (
    'header'          => 'Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate',
    'proxy'           => 'tcp://proxy.your_domain.com:8080',
    'request_fulluri' => true
  )
);

$ctx = stream_context_create($params);

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement(file_get_contents($request_url,
false, $ctx));

// $xml->Response->Placemark->Point->coordinates;