Sending HTTP Post Request to site with array in Body - php

Question

I'm trying to make a POST request and send some values in the body of an API call. In the documentation of the API it says I need to make a POST request, using startUrls as an array with key and value.
<?php
$url = 'https://api.apify.com/v1/USERID/crawlers/CRAWLERID/execute?token=TOKENID';
$postData = array(
'startUrls' => array(array('key'=>'START', 'value'=>'https://instagram.com/instagram'))
);
$context = stream_context_create(array(
'http' => array(
'method' => 'POST',
'header' => 'Content-type: application/json',
'body' => json_encode($postData)
)
));
$resp = file_get_contents($url, FALSE, $context);
print_r($resp);
?>
The JSON seems to be how it should, but the script is not sending the body properly to the website.

Answer 1

According to the documentation, there is no body option for the HTTP context. Try content instead:
<?php
$url = "https://api.apify.com/v1/USERID/crawlers/CRAWLERID/execute?token=TOKENID";
$postData = [
"startUrls" => [
["key"=>"START", "value" => "https://instagram.com/instagram"]
]
];
$context = stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Content-type: application/json",
"content" => json_encode($postData)
]
]);
$resp = file_get_contents($url, FALSE, $context);
print_r($resp);

Answer 2

The following code will work. I have set the headers and specified the content type.
$request = new HttpRequest();
$request->setUrl('$url = 'https://api.apify.com/v1/USERID/crawlers/CRAWLERID/execute?token=TOKENID');
$request->setMethod(HTTP_METH_POST);
$request->setHeaders(array(
'cache-control' => 'no-cache',
'content-type' => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
));
$request->setContentType('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
$request->setPostFields(array('key'=>'START', 'value'=>'https://instagram.com/instagram')
));
try {
$response = $request->send();
echo $response->getBody();
} catch (HttpException $ex) {
echo $ex;
}
If you want to try with cUrl the following code snippet will work.
$curl = curl_init();
$postData = array(
'startUrls' => array(array('key'=>'START', 'value'=>'https://instagram.com/instagram'))
);
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => "https://api.apify.com/v1/USERID/crawlers/CRAWLERID/execute?token=TOKENID",
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $postData,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
"Cache-Control: no-cache",
"content-type: multipart/form-data;"
),
));
$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);
curl_close($curl);