PHP Curl doesn't return a response - php

Question

I'm trying to get the response back from an API using curl in php but for some reason it fails. However, when I open the API call link in a browser it works fine. Furthermore, if I try to get the response with curl after I've opened the link in the browser curl works but if I change the $url variable to a new link it again stops working until I open it in the browser again.
Here is my code, don't worry about the api key it's just a test:
<?php
set_time_limit(30);
$API_KEY = "ak_wujpBbfefrmxDleyAmnqtFpqAcmey";
$url = 'https://www.google.com/';
$api_call = "https://www.screenshot-website.com/api/$API_KEY?url=$url&type=tablet";
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
CURLOPT_URL => $api_call,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS => 30000,
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 30,
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS => 30000 )
);
$response = json_decode(curl_exec($curl), true);
if($errno = curl_errno($curl)) {
$error_message = curl_strerror($errno);
echo "cURL error ({$errno}):\n {$error_message}";
}
curl_close($curl); ?>
<img src="<?php echo $response['image']; ?>">
I get no errors at all.

Answer 1

I think your problem is with the "https" since curl set ssl_verifier to true
"The problem is that cURL has not been configured to trust the server’s HTTPS certificate." you can read the full information here.
You could try setting this option:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);