I need to make GET/POST requests to php API in subfolder (public/forum/api.php), e.g. not url from routes table.

file_get_contents() doesn't work on localhost for some reason on dev server (port 8000).

// this keeps loading without result

$response = file_get_contents('http://localhost:8000/forum/api.php');

// these works fine

$response = file_get_contents('http://localhost'); // apache index without port

$response = file_get_contents('http://google.com'); // remote call

Navigating in borwser to http://localhost:8000/forum/api.php works fine.

Same results for curl calls.. Any ideas why requests from php to port 8000 freeze? Is there any other way?

Thanks