Passing $_POST values with cURL

Question

How do you pass $_POST values to a page using cURL?

Answer 1

Should work fine.

$data = array('name' => 'Ross', 'php_master' => true);

// You can POST a file by prefixing with an @ (for <input type="file"> fields)
$data['file'] = '@/home/user/world.jpg';

$handle = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
curl_exec($handle);
curl_close($handle)

We have two options here, CURLOPT_POST which turns HTTP POST on, and CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS which contains an array of our post data to submit. This can be used to submit data to POST <form>s.

---

It is important to note that curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); takes the $data in two formats, and that this determines how the post data will be encoded.

1. $data as an array(): The data will be sent as multipart/form-data which is not always accepted by the server.

   $data = array('name' => 'Ross', 'php_master' => true);
   curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
   

2. $data as url encoded string: The data will be sent as application/x-www-form-urlencoded, which is the default encoding for submitted html form data.

   $data = array('name' => 'Ross', 'php_master' => true);
   curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($data));
   

I hope this will help others save their time.

See:

• curl_init
• curl_setopt

Answer 2

Ross has the right idea for POSTing the usual parameter/value format to a url.

I recently ran into a situation where I needed to POST some XML as Content-Type "text/xml" without any parameter pairs so here's how you do that:

$xml = '<?xml version="1.0"?><stuff><child>foo</child><child>bar</child></stuff>';
$httpRequest = curl_init();

curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-Type:  text/xml"));
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);

curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $xml);

$returnHeader = curl_exec($httpRequest);
curl_close($httpRequest);

In my case, I needed to parse some values out of the HTTP response header so you may not necessarily need to set CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER or CURLOPT_HEADER.

Answer 3

Another simple PHP example of using cURL:

<?php
    $ch = curl_init();                    // Initiate cURL
    $url = "http://www.somesite.com/curl_example.php"; // Where you want to post data
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);  // Tell cURL you want to post something
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "var1=value1&var2=value2&var_n=value_n"); // Define what you want to post
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // Return the output in string format
    $output = curl_exec ($ch); // Execute
    
    curl_close ($ch); // Close cURL handle
    
    var_dump($output); // Show output
?>

Instead of using curl_setopt you can use curl_setopt_array.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt-array.php

Answer 4

$query_string = "";

if ($_POST) {
    $kv = array();
    foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
        $kv[] = stripslashes($key) . "=" . stripslashes($value);
    }
    $query_string = join("&", $kv);
}

if (!function_exists('curl_init')){
    die('Sorry cURL is not installed!');
}

$url = 'https://www.abcd.com/servlet/';

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, count($kv));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $query_string);

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, FALSE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, FALSE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);

$result = curl_exec($ch);

curl_close($ch);

Answer 5

$url='Your url'; // Specify your url
$data= array('parameterkey1'=>value,'parameterkey2'=>value); // Add parameters in key value
$ch = curl_init(); // Initialize cURL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($data));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Answer 6

<?php
    function executeCurl($arrOptions) {

        $mixCH = curl_init();

        foreach ($arrOptions as $strCurlOpt => $mixCurlOptValue) {
            curl_setopt($mixCH, $strCurlOpt, $mixCurlOptValue);
        }

        $mixResponse = curl_exec($mixCH);
        curl_close($mixCH);
        return $mixResponse;
    }

    // If any HTTP authentication is needed.
    $username = 'http-auth-username';
    $password = 'http-auth-password';

    $requestType = 'POST'; // This can be PUT or POST

    // This is a sample array. You can use $arrPostData = $_POST
    $arrPostData = array(
        'key1'  => 'value-1-for-k1y-1',
        'key2'  => 'value-2-for-key-2',
        'key3'  => array(
                'key31'   => 'value-for-key-3-1',
                'key32'   => array(
                    'key321' => 'value-for-key321'
                )
        ),
        'key4'  => array(
            'key'   => 'value'
        )
    );

    // You can set your post data
    $postData = http_build_query($arrPostData); // Raw PHP array

    $postData = json_encode($arrPostData); // Only USE this when request JSON data.

    $mixResponse = executeCurl(array(
        CURLOPT_URL => 'http://whatever-your-request-url.com/xyz/yii',
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_HTTPGET => true,
        CURLOPT_VERBOSE => true,
        CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true,
        CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => $requestType,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS  => $postData,
        CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER  => array(
            "X-HTTP-Method-Override: " . $requestType,
            'Content-Type: application/json', // Only USE this when requesting JSON data
        ),

        // If HTTP authentication is required, use the below lines.
        CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH => CURLAUTH_BASIC,
        CURLOPT_USERPWD  => $username. ':' . $password
    ));

    // $mixResponse contains your server response.