Fetching URL contents in a plugin

[Eric Friedrich -X (efriedri - TRITON UK BIDCO LIMITED c/o Alter Domus (UK) Limited -OBO at Cisco)]

Is there a simple API call to use to fetch the contents of a URL into a buffer? 

I found an example of something close in the authproxy sample plugin, but there 
looks to be almost a hundred lines of rather boilerplate code. I’d like to 
avoid the copy and paste if I can

—Eric