Having trouble fetching external API data into a custom block due to security conflicts

Using Concrete / Help
1

Hey everyone, I’m currently building a community portal for a gaming group using Concrete CMS, and I’ve hit a wall with a custom block I’m developing.

For context, our group relies on a specific scripting environment that the guys consider the best roblox executor for testing our game mods, and I wanted to pull their update API directly into our CMS dashboard so the team knows when a new version drops without leaving the site.

The main issue I’m running into is that when my custom block tries to make an outbound cURL request to fetch this JSON data, Concrete’s security layer or firewall completely blocks the request or times out. I’ve tried whitelisting the external domain in the system settings, but it still refuses to connect properly.

This is causing a few related issues. Because the API call fails, I’m running into a caching nightmare where the page will occasionally crash or hang during load if the external endpoint is unreachable, rather than just gracefully failing and showing a cached fallback. Has anyone here successfully integrated third-party APIs that might have unusual SSL configs or non-standard headers into Concrete? How do you handle outbound data fetching without compromising the CMS security or breaking the frontend when the external server drops?

2

I’d be surprised if it’s s security issue in concrete. By default, there are no restrictions on outgoing connections. My guess is you hosting environment requires a proxy or blocks connections. Have you connected the site to the marketplace? That requires an outgoing connection.

Perhaps try adding
```
$foo = file_get_contents(‘https://www.google.com’);
var_dump($foo);

into your block’s view.php and see if that works. I assume that your host permits the use of urls in file_get_contents.