Using cloudflare api to delete a file from cache not working - php

Question

Here is my code for trying to delete a file a file via the api
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/<MY-ZONE-ID>/purge_cache");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "DELETE");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$headers = [
'X-Auth-Email: MYEMAIL',
'X-Auth-Key: MY-AUTH-KEY',
'Content-Type: application/json'
];
$data = json_encode(array("files" => "https://example.com/file/".$filename));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($data));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
The response i get is as follows
{
"success":false,
"errors":[
{
"code":1012,
"message":"Request must contain one of \"purge_everything\" or \"files\", or \"tags"
}
],
"messages":[
],
"result":null
}
Documentation says tag is optional so it should work
curl -X DELETE "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/023e105f4ecef8ad9ca31a8372d0c353/purge_cache" \
-H "X-Auth-Email: user#example.com" \
-H "X-Auth-Key: c2547eb745079dac9320b638f5e225cf483cc5cfdda41" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data '{"files":["http://www.example.com/css/styles.css"],"tags":["some-tag","another-tag"]}'
What am In doing wrong here ?

Answer 1

I maybe because your files property is not an array.
Try
$data = json_encode(array("files" => array("https://example.com/file/".$filename)));

Answer 2

This is a bit confusing. Post Data is usually sent in key value pairs.
Also when the post data is an array curl changes the content type to multipart/form-data
When post data is sent as a query string, it's in the format of key1=value1&key2=value2
It appears the json is the value with no key.
I would try it both as an array and string and look at the request header.
In the request header look at the content-type and the data.
To get the request header in the curl return add this option:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT, true);
You may need to add:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
$data[] = json_encode(array('files'=>"https://example.com/file/$filename"));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$data);
$data = json_encode(array('files'=>"https://example.com/file/$filename"));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$data);
PS: You do not need to use the . concatenation when using double quotes for $filename