file put contents alternative php

1<?php
2// this is an alternative for file_get_contents
3// using Curl >
4
5function url_get_contents ($Url) {
6    if (!function_exists('curl_init')){ 
7        die('CURL is not installed!');
8    }
9    $ch = curl_init();
10    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $Url);
11    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
12    $output = curl_exec($ch);
13    curl_close($ch);
14    return json_decode($output,JSON_OBJECT_AS_ARRAY);
15}
16
17?>