PHP CURL tutorial with Examples

Curl is used to send and receive data using various protocols. PHP supports libcurl, a library created by Daniel Stenberg. Below is the curl official description.

curl is a tool to transfer data from or to a server, using one of the supported protocols (DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET and TFTP). The command is designed to work without user interaction.

Curl offers a busload of useful tricks like proxy support, user authentication, FTP upload, HTTP post, SSL connections, cookies, file transfer resume, Metalink, and more

In this tutorial I am going to show you basic use of curl in PHP. I will also cover curl GET and POST request in this tutorial.

Before we start, first check that curl is enable or not. If you are not sure then check your phpinfo()

How to enable CURL:

By default curl is not enabled in apache and its web sever solutions. You need to enable it in php.ini file. Php.ini file most of the time located in php folder (xampp/mamp/wamp/xampp-vm). Open php.ini and find ;extension=php_curl.dll. Then remove ";" before extension=php_curl.dll. Restart your apache service that’s it.

CURL Basics:

curl_init() function is used to initialize curl request. curl_exec() function is used to execute curl. curl_close() function is used to finish curl session.

Example 1:


$cURL = curl_init('http://example.com/');
$response = curl_exec($cURL);
curl_close($cURL);

$cURL = curl_init('http://example.com/');

$response = curl_exec($cURL);

curl_close($cURL);

In the above example, I used curl_init() function and pass example.com as a parameter. Then I execute curl using curl_exec function and after that I closed curl_close. When I will hit above code by browser will fetch example.com html and display on my browser screen.

There is another way to send above request.

Example 2:


$cURL = curl_init();
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL,'http://example.com/');
$response = curl_exec($cURL);
curl_close($cURL);

$cURL = curl_init();

curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL,'http://example.com/');

$response = curl_exec($cURL);

curl_close($cURL);

You notice that I didn’t pass any domain url in curl_init() function. I used curl_setopt() function instead and passed $cURL, CURLOPT_URL and http://example.com.

curl_setopt() function is used to set an option for curl transfer. It takes 3 parameters, first curl handle return by curl_init(), second is CURLOPT_XXX option to set and third is the value to set for CURLOPT_XXX option. CURLOPT_XXX could be any option provided by curl.

Below are some of the common CURLOPT

Option	Value
CURLOPT_HEADER	TRUE to include the header in the output.
CURLOPT_PUT	TRUE to HTTP PUT a file. The file to PUT must be set with CURLOPT_INFILE and CURLOPT_INFILESIZE.
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER	TRUE to return the transfer as a string of the return value of curl_exec() instead of outputting it out directly.
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER	FALSE to stop cURL from verifying the peer’s certificate.
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT	The number of seconds to wait while trying to connect. Use 0 to wait indefinitely
CURLOPT_POST	TRUE to do a regular HTTP POST. This POST is the normal application/x-www-form-urlencoded kind, most commonly used by HTML forms.
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS	The full data to post in a HTTP “POST” operation. To post a file, prepend a filename with @ and use the full path. The filetype can be explicitly specified by following the filename with the type in the format ‘;type=mimetype’. This parameter can either be passed as a urlencoded string like ‘para1=val1&para2=val2&…’ or as an array with the field name as key and field data as value.
CURLOPT_PROXY	The HTTP proxy to tunnel requests through.
CURLOPT_USERAGENT	The contents of the “User-Agent: ” header to be used in a HTTP request.
CURLOPT_USERNAME	The user name to use in authentication
CURLOPT_USERPWD	A username and password formatted as “[username]:[password]” to use for the connection

Using curl_setopt options:

Now we know about curl_setopt() function. Let’s use this function in our example.

Example 3:


$cURL = curl_init();
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL,'http://example.com/');
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HEADER,true);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,10);
$response = curl_exec($cURL);
curl_close($cURL);
echo $response;

$cURL = curl_init();

curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL,'http://example.com/');

curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HEADER,true);

curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);

curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,10);

$response = curl_exec($cURL);

curl_close($cURL);

echo $response;

Above code has 4 curl_setopt() function with different options. CURLOPT_HEADER is set to true which prints header in the output. CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER is set to true which holds the output in $response. CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT has timeout value 10 seconds. Above code will return below output.

PHP Curl Post Request:

Below is the Curl post request code in which I will post array of user information to example.com. You can use your live url to check this post request. http_build_query() function generates url-encoded query string for more details visit my post 10 PHP Url Functions – Every beginner must check.

To post data to any website I use and set CURLOPT_POST option to true. Then I use CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS option and password encoded data array to third parameter.


$dataArray = array(
	"name"=>"ahsan",
	"gender"=>"male",
	"email"=>"ahsan@example.com",
	"phone"=>"0000 0000 00",
	);

$data = http_build_query($dataArray);

$url = 'http://example.com/';
$cURL = curl_init();
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HEADER,true);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,10);

curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
$response = curl_exec($cURL);
curl_close($cURL);

echo $response;