PHP curl

Introduction

Sometimes we need to send requests to another url to get data, maybe another API. So how can we do that in PHP?

There are many ways but today we are going to talk about curl.

Curl

In order to work with curl in php you need to know 4 functions

1. Curl_init
2. Curl_setopt_array
3. Curl_exec
4. Curl_close

1. Curl_init

initializes the curl request and returns an object that you would need for sending the request.

2. Curl_setopt_array

Then you should add options to your request with curl_setopt_array function. The first argument is the curl object that was returned from the first function and the second argument is an array of all the options

Some of the most common options are:

CURLOPT_URL: url that you are sending the request to

CURLOPT_TIMEOUT: maximum seconds that you are willing to wait. Default is 30 seconds

CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST: what type of request are you sending. Post, get, delete, etc.

CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER: headers like accept and content type goes here.

3. Curl_exec

After setting the options it’s time to send the request. You can do it by running curl_exec. This will get the returned object from the first function as an argument. This function returns the response you’ve received.

4. Curl_close

Then you should close  the connection by running curl_close. Again it need the curl object as the argument.

Now let’s see all of it together.

// 1. initialize
$curl = curl_init();
$headers = [
//    'Accept: application/json',
//    'Content-Type: application/xml'
];
$requestType = 'POST'; // GET POST DELETE etc.
$turl = 'https://example.com';
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
    CURLOPT_URL => $url,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
    CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
    CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => false,
    CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
    CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => $requestType,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => '',
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => $headers,
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

https://youtu.be/YCTz-QEbAJk

Conclusion

Now you know about curl in PHP.

I recommend you to open a PHP files and try send a request to any website. see if you can get a response.

If you have any suggestions, questions, or opinions, please contact me. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Key takeaways

• send request
• curl
• curl init
• curl open and curl close
• curl exec