[TYPO3-english] Working with remote files

[Andreas Cord-Landwehr]

Hello, I'm on the search for some improvements on one of my scripts. I
have an extension that gets a remote XML file from another server,
processes this file and gives some outputs.
At the moment I am working with raw "fsockopen" and HTTP requests to get
this file. But I'm not convinced that this the best way 'cause I assume
Typo3 must include some functionality to make this easier.

Does anybody has an idea/suggestion what to use?

Thanks in advance,
   Andreas