PHP print_r not returning json request - php

Question

The following code runs without any errors, however it doesn't return anything.
If I paste it into my browser it returns the information I'm looking for, I can also replace it with another URL and it works perfectly.
$ch = curl_init();
$url = 'https://api.coronavirus.data.gov.uk/v1/data?filters=areaName=Somerset&structure={"date":"date","areaName":"areaName","areaCode":"areaCode","newCasesByPublishDate":"newCasesByPublishDate","cumCasesByPublishDate":"cumCasesByPublishDate","newDeathsByDeathDate":"newDeathsByDeathDate","cumDeathsByDeathDate":"cumDeathsByDeathDate"}';
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$resp = curl_exec($ch);
$decode =json_decode($resp);
print_r($decode);
curl_close($ch);

Answer 1

You can use following generated code by the postman
<?php
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => 'https://api.coronavirus.data.gov.uk/v1/',
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'GET',
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS =>'{"date":"date","areaName":"areaName","areaCode":"areaCode","newCasesByPublishDate":"newCasesByPublishDate","cumCasesByPublishDate":"cumCasesByPublishDate","newDeathsByDeathDate":"newDeathsByDeathDate","cumDeathsByDeathDate":"cumDeathsByDeathDate"}',
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
'Content-Type: application/json'
),
));
$response = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

Answer 2

This code is worked. Reason is encoding of received content.
try {
$ch = curl_init();
// Check if initialization had gone wrong*
if ( $ch === false ) {
throw new RuntimeException( 'failed to initialize' );
}
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_URL,
'https://api.coronavirus.data.gov.uk/v1/data?filters=areaName=Somerset&structure={"date":"date","areaName":"areaName","areaCode":"areaCode","newCasesByPublishDate":"newCasesByPublishDate","cumCasesByPublishDate":"cumCasesByPublishDate","newDeathsByDeathDate":"newDeathsByDeathDate","cumDeathsByDeathDate":"cumDeathsByDeathDate"}' );
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
// Solution is here. Response is the compressed content which your curl failed to detect. Empty encoding means to handle any type of encoding. It should solve your issue.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, '');
$content = curl_exec( $ch );
curl_close( $ch );
if ( $content === false ) {
throw new RuntimeException( curl_error( $ch ), curl_errno( $ch ) );
}
/* Process $content here */
$decode = json_decode( $content );
var_dump( $decode );
// Close curl handle
curl_close( $ch );
} catch ( RuntimeException $e ) {
trigger_error(
sprintf(
'Curl failed with error #%d: %s',
$e->getCode(),
$e->getMessage()
),
E_USER_ERROR
);
}