What is the best approch using CURLS in php? - php

Question

I have the following code wherein I am calling a data through php CURL.
$URL = '//abc.com';
$gb = curl_init();
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_URL,$URL);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,10);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,10);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER,false);
$res = curl_exec($gb);
curl_close($gb);
$data = json_decode($res,true);
What is the best way to call CURL request in case I have multiple variants of URL like?
1). //abc.com
2). //abc.com/abc
3). //abc.com/123
Should I call CURL multiple times or how to define it in php function?

Answer 1

You can do something like
function curlRequest($url){
$gb = curl_init();
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,10);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,10);
curl_setopt($gb,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER,false);
$res = curl_exec($gb);
$data = json_decode($res,true);
return $data;
}
$urls = ["http://url1","http://url2","http://url3"];
foreach($urls as $url){
curlRequest($url);//do something with data
}
I don't see difference calling the same domain or other since different routes retrieve different information. If all of these urls are equivalents, you don't need foreach or for solution.

Answer 2

It depends.
But if you connect to same website / service every time, you can freely use same connection.
This will allow you to set parameters for the connection one time only (eg. cookies or other headers).
You may also extract CURL handler creation to separated function and then only switch URLs for specific requests.
Your code should look like:
function init_my_curl() {
$h = curl_init();
curl_setopt($h, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($h, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 10);
curl_setopt($h, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
curl_setopt($h, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
return $h;
}
function do_request($handle, $url) {
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$result = curl_exec($handle);
return json_decode($result, true);
}
Than you call:
$curl = init_my_curl();
do_request($curl, '//abc.com');
do_request($curl, '//abc.com/abc');
do_request($curl, '//abc.com/123');
curl_close($curl);
You can also wrap everything in class, but it depends on PHP version you are using and your code style.