Converge API - check if API is available - php

Question

I am using Converge API to transfer funds from Credit Cards to my merchant account in my system.
This is the API URL that I am using:
https://api.convergepay.com/VirtualMerchant/process.do
Sometimes I am having connectivity issues to the API and as a result, I am getting blank screens or similar errors.
Is there a way I can check if the API is available before I do the CCSALE transaction? This is a simple code I setup to try and achieve this task.
$url = 'https://api.convergepay.com/VirtualMerchant/process.do';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
//$result will be false if the CURL request fails.
curl_close($ch);

Answer 1

Try getting the error info and then redirect the user. Use the code below to get a detailed response from CURL
$url = 'https://api.convergepay.com/VirtualMerchant/process.do';
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, true);
//Tell cURL that it should only spend 10 seconds
//trying to connect to the URL.
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 10);
//A given cURL operation should only take
//30 seconds max.
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30);
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($curl , CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
$response = curl_exec($curl);
if ($response === false)
$response = curl_error($curl);
echo stripslashes($response);
curl_close($curl);