Php using Curl to POST to a custom API - php

Question

I'm working on a project and am attempting to link a Java application to my website/database via an API.
I'm running on an aws ec2 instance. The problem I am encountering is using Curl to POST data to another webpage. (The end-product will require proxies, and I've decided to use curl to manage this.)
The PHP code that makes the request:
<?php
function get_url($url)
{
$ch = curl_init();
if($ch === false)
{
die('Failed to create curl object');
}
// Temporary, just trying to get POST value to work.
$data = "password=temp";
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$data2 = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data2;
}
echo get_url("www.mywebsite.org/API/myscript.php");
?>
The server-side code that handles the request:
<?php
echo "Password: " . $_POST["password"];
?>
The issue I am having is with passing the post variables through curl and retrieving them.
The output on the page is:
Password:
and the POST variables are not being set. I'm thinking I am missing a CURLOPT somewhere but can't figure out which one!