How to send an OPTIONS request using PHP - php

Question

Does anyone know how to send an "OPTIONS" request using PHP.
I can't find a curl setopt that does this.
I'm using php 5.6.7
I've figured out GET, POST, DELETE, and PUT. Just need OPTIONS.
I have tried hd's answer below:
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,"theurl");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "OPTIONS");
$r = curl_exec($ch);
print_r($http_response_header);
curl_close($ch);
and I'm getting the error:
Undefined variable: http_response_header in C:\IIS_Emea\WebRoot\Site01\test\rest1.php on line 7
How do I get the results?

Answer 1

<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
CURLOPT_URL => 'http://stackoverflow.com/',
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'OPTIONS',
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_HEADER => true,
CURLOPT_NOBODY => true,
CURLOPT_VERBOSE => true,
));
$r = curl_exec($ch);
echo PHP_EOL.'Response Headers:'.PHP_EOL;
print_r($r);
curl_close($ch);
What it does:
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'OPTIONS' - defines the HTTP request method.
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true - tell curl_exec not to output results but return them.
CURLOPT_HEADER => true - return headers.
CURLOPT_NOBODY => true - do not return body.
CURLOPT_VERBOSE => true - just for debugging, remove it on production. It allows to see the request done by the library and the response received.
The output from the script looks like this
* Trying 104.16.36.249...
* Connected to stackoverflow.com (104.16.36.249) port 80 (#0)
> OPTIONS / HTTP/1.1
Host: stackoverflow.com
Accept: */*
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:02:44 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
< Connection: keep-alive
< Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d96e454843a81721eeb77cc4ebb49d2c91461142964; expires=Thu, 20-Apr-17 09:02:44 GMT; path=/; domain=.stackoverflow.com; HttpOnly
< Cache-Control: public, no-cache="Set-Cookie", max-age=60
< Expires: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:03:44 GMT
< Last-Modified: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:02:44 GMT
< Vary: *
< X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
< X-Request-Guid: a2f90416-9ec1-4ec9-b2d9-a69e22cc05d5
< Set-Cookie: prov=37be6386-6390-40fb-9f0a-42efdfcf2d71; domain=.stackoverflow.com; expires=Fri, 01-Jan-2055 00:00:00 GMT; path=/; HttpOnly
< Server: cloudflare-nginx
< CF-RAY: 29676b4517f92b21-WAW
<
* Excess found in a non pipelined read: excess = 725 url = / (zero-length body)
* Connection #0 to host stackoverflow.com left intact
Response Headers:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:02:44 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d96e454843a81721eeb77cc4ebb49d2c91461142964; expires=Thu, 20-Apr-17 09:02:44 GMT; path=/; domain=.stackoverflow.com; HttpOnly
Cache-Control: public, no-cache="Set-Cookie", max-age=60
Expires: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:03:44 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:02:44 GMT
Vary: *
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Request-Guid: a2f90416-9ec1-4ec9-b2d9-a69e22cc05d5
Set-Cookie: prov=37be6386-6390-40fb-9f0a-42efdfcf2d71; domain=.stackoverflow.com; expires=Fri, 01-Jan-2055 00:00:00 GMT; path=/; HttpOnly
Server: cloudflare-nginx
CF-RAY: 29676b4517f92b21-WAW
You get response headers as a string and you need to parse it. But I guess this is out of scope of the question.

Answer 2

You can use curl_setopt to set the custom request
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'OPTIONS'); // HTTP request is 'OPTIONS'