file_get_contents php
===

the following code is to query an online thesaurus for a search engine I'm building as a college project but I'm having problems with file_get_contents failed to open stream errors. When I send a word the thesaurus doesn't recognize, it throws up an error. I'm trying to write a piece of code that will ignore the error and just proceed without the information.

    $thesaurus_search="http://words.bighugelabs.com/api/2/0089388bb57f/".$this->formatted_query."/php";
    	$result_thesaurus=file_get_contents($thesaurus_search);

I tried 

    if(file_get_contents($thesaurus_search)!=NULL)
                   { do stuff

but its not working because it still returns some sort of string.

Can someone help? thanks guys

