How to send JSON data in cURL in PHP - php

Question

I have rest API of Nodejs Server, I'm trying to make a POST call to it using PHP.
My php code is:
function post_url($apiRoute,$data) {
$request_url = 'http://test-app.herokuapp.com';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $request_url . $apiRoute);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
echo $data ;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $result;
}
I have tried calling this function with diff forms of data:
$g = array("_id" => "111");
$postapiresponse = post_url('/CCTRequest/get',json_encode($g));
OR
$postapiresponse = post_url('/CCTRequest/get',json_encode(array("_id" => "111"));
But on server side which Node.js, when I console log req.body I get data like this:
{ '{"_id":"111"}': '' }
How should I pass the data in PHP so I can get proper obj in node.js i.e:
{ '_id': '111' }

Answer 1

See the PHP document:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php
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:
If value is an array, the Content-Type header will be set to multipart/form-data.
So you can pass a query string returned by http_build_query() into CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS:
post_url('/CCTRequest/get', http_build_query($g, null, '&'));
and remove curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));. (In fact, the varieble should be $ch, but you typed $curl, so this line doesn't work.)
In the other way, you can replace curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); with
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');, it can prevent the data be encoded automaticlly. And then send json_encode() data.

Answer 2

I have solved by using http_build_query($g, null, '&') for making data.
$g = array("_id" => "111");
$g = http_build_query($g, null, '&');
$postapiresponse = post_url('/CCTRequest/get', $g);

Answer 3

You have a typo in the code, which will prevent it setting the header $curl should be $ch:
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));
You also need CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER uncommented.
function post_url($apiRoute, $data) {
$request_url = 'www.example.com';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $request_url . $apiRoute);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, ['Content-Type:application/json']);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $result;
}