How to use CURL instead of file_get_contents?

This should work

function curl_load($url){
    curl_setopt($ch=curl_init(), CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $response;
}

$url = "http://www.google.com";
echo curl_load($url);

try this:

function file_get_contents_curl($url) {
    $ch = curl_init();

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);       

    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    return $data;
}