Why Do I get “wp_remote-get: could not handle for fopen()”?

Question

I'm trying to get an image from Google but...

wp_remote_get returns me:

Could not open handle for fopen() to 
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images?
v=1.0&q=whatever.whatever&key=MYKEYWHICHIDONTPOST&userip=127.0.0"

I don't know why:

• when I enter the url directly I do get results.
• all other wp_remote_gets in the same class work ok so yes php.ini allow=ok

this is the code i run:

$referer_url = get_bloginfo('url');
$referer = $parsed_url[host];                   
$google_images_url = self::GOOGLE_IMAGES_URL . "&q=" .  $url_to_look_for . "&key=" . $key . "&userip="  . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$response = wp_remote_get($google_images_url, array( 'headers' => array( 'Referer' => $referer)));

hmmm

Answer 1

Yep, I experienced that under some network configurations https links fail (my case was behind proxy server).

You can use Core Control plugin to test available HTTP transports and disable glitchy one. In my case bumping transport to curl solved issue.