Duplicate data stored when using cURL - php

Question

I am trying to post data using cURL to my web services to store data into database there, but it's storing the same data two times, instead of one. I applied condition there and it's working but i can not find the reason behind that behavior.
$postedArray['login_credentials'] = $this->login_data;
$postedArray['post_data'] = $this->arrPostData;
$str = http_build_query($postedArray);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Expect:'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $this->requestUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, 'gzip,deflate');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $str);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 999);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 999);
if (curl_exec($ch) === false) {
echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
return false;
}
$response = curl_exec($ch);
$response = json_decode($response, true);
curl_close($ch);
return $response;

Answer 1

Because you are actually calling curl_exec 2 times:
if (curl_exec($ch) === false) {
echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
return false;
}
$response = curl_exec($ch);
The first time while evaluating the response inside the if, and then again after the if. One should be dropped.

Answer 2

use curl_exec($ch) only once, code should look like this:
// code goes here
$response = curl_exec($ch);
if ($response === false)
{
echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
return false;
}
else
{
$json_response = json_decode($response, true);
}
curl_close($ch);
return $json_response;