Wrong URL when using wp_insert_attachment - wordpress

Question

I created a plugin as 3rd party to acomodate system with wordpress website on main site. So the scenario is:
when user hit submit on the system it will also added to wordpress website, it's working perfect, no problem at all. but when i try to set the featured image through wp_insert_attachment it keep me give a URL like
http://xxxxx.com/wp-content/uploads/http://xxxxx.com/system/media/.../xx.jpg
what i want to be is only http://xxxxx.com/system/media/.../xx.jpg saved as featured image, is it possible to do so?
here is my current script
if($pt == "pictures"){
$filename_url = $_GET["dml_file"];
$mime = wp_check_filetype($filename_url, null);
$data = array(
'post_mime_type' => $mime['type'],
'post_title' => preg_replace('/\.[^.]+$/', '', basename($_GET["dml_file"])),
'post_content' => '',
'post_status' => 'inherit'
);
$attachment_id = wp_insert_attachment($data, $filename_url, $pid);
update_post_meta($pid, $custom_field, $attachment_id);
}else{
update_post_meta($pid, $custom_field, $_GET["dml_file"]);
}
I have tried to use file_get_contents and file_put_contents to create image in WP installation, but I don't want that way.
The system is submitting this:
http://user:pass!#localhost/wp-content/plugins/dml3rdparty/dmlsubmit.php?dml_sa‌ve=save&dml_file=http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/dml/assets/media/Accreditation/download.d‌15bdf4e9e.jpg&dml_type=Print Quality Photos&dml_description=test|download.jpg&dml_status=publish

Answer 1

From wp_insert_attachment documentation (my emphasis in bold):
$filename
(string) (optional) Location of the file on the server. Use absolute path and not the URI of the file. The file MUST be on the uploads directory. See wp_upload_dir()
Default: false
Much probably, you can solve this with media_handle_sideload().

Answer 2

This function gets the file content using cURL:
function my_file_get_contents($url){
$options = array(
CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true,
CURLOPT_HEADER => false,
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 120,
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10
);
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt_array($ch,$options);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
This function uses the above to get the image, saves it to the uploads folder, and sets it as a featured image for a post:
function my_featured_image($image_url,$post_id){
$upload_dir = wp_upload_dir();
$image_data = my_file_get_contents($image_url);
$filename = strtok($image_url, '?');
$filename = basename($filename);
if(wp_mkdir_p($upload_dir["path"])){
$file = $upload_dir["path"]."/".$filename;
}else{
$file = $upload_dir["basedir"]."/".$filename;
}
file_put_contents($file, $image_data);
$wp_filetype = wp_check_filetype($filename,null);
$post_author = get_post_field("post_author",$post_id);
$attachment = array(
"post_author" => $post_author,
"post_mime_type" => $wp_filetype["type"],
"post_title" => sanitize_file_name($filename),
"post_content" => "",
"post_status" => "inherit"
);
$attach_id = wp_insert_attachment($attachment,$file,$post_id);
require_once(ABSPATH."wp-admin/includes/image.php");
$attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata($attach_id,$file);
$res1 = wp_update_attachment_metadata($attach_id,$attach_data);
$res2 = set_post_thumbnail($post_id, $attach_id);
}
Call with:
my_featured_image($image_url,$post_id);