URL encode error? - php

Question

My PHP code (free.php) on http://techmentry.com/free.php is
<?php
{
//Variables to POST
$access_token = "b34480a685e7d638d9ee3e53cXXXXX";
$message = "hi";
$send_to = "existing_contacts";
//Initialize CURL data to send via POST to the API
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://freesmsgateway.com/api_send");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,
array('access_token' => $access_token,
'message' => urlencode('hi'),
'send_to' => $send_to,)
);
//Execute CURL command and return into variable $result
$result = curl_exec($ch);
//Do stuff
echo "$result";
}
?>
I am getting this error: THE MESSAGE WAS BLANK
This error means: "The message field was blank or was not properly URL encoded" (as told by my SMS gateway). But as you can see that my message field isn't blank.

Answer 1

I believe you can't send an array to CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, you would need to replace the line with the following
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "access_token=".$accesstoken."&message=".urlencode('hi')."&send_to=".$send_to);
I hope this solves it

Answer 2

Use http_build_query():
<?php
{
$postdata = array();
//Variables to POST
$postdata['access_token'] = "b34480a685e7d638d9ee3e53cXXXXX";
$postdata['message'] = "hi";
$postdata['send_to'] = "existing_contacts";
//Initialize CURL data to send via POST to the API
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://freesmsgateway.com/api_send");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($postdata) );
//Execute CURL command and return into variable $result
$result = curl_exec($ch);
//Do stuff
echo "$result";
}
?>