PHP REST client API call - php

Question

I'm wondering, is there an easy way to perform a REST API GET call? I've been reading about cURL, but is that a good way to do it?
I also came across php://input but I have no idea how to use it. Does anyone have an example for me?
I don't need advanced API client stuff, I just need to perform a GET call to a certain URL to get some JSON data that will be parsed by the client.
Thanks!

Answer 1

There are multiple ways to make REST client API call:
Use CURL
CURL is the simplest and good way to go. Here is a simple call
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, POST DATA);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
print_r($result);
curl_close($ch);
Use Guzzle
It's a "PHP HTTP client that makes it easy to work with HTTP/1.1 and takes the pain out of consuming web services". Working with Guzzle is much easier than working with cURL.
Here's an example from the Web site:
$client = new GuzzleHttp\Client();
$res = $client->get('https://api.github.com/user', [
'auth' => ['user', 'pass']
]);
echo $res->getStatusCode(); // 200
echo $res->getHeader('content-type'); // 'application/json; charset=utf8'
echo $res->getBody(); // {"type":"User"...'
var_export($res->json()); // Outputs the JSON decoded data
Use file_get_contents
If you have a url and your php supports it, you could just call file_get_contents:
$response = file_get_contents('http://example.com/path/to/api/call?param1=5');
if $response is JSON, use json_decode to turn it into php array:
$response = json_decode($response);
Use Symfony's RestClient
If you are using Symfony there's a great rest client bundle that even includes all of the ~100 exceptions and throws them instead of returning some meaningless error code + message.
try {
$restClient = new RestClient();
$response = $restClient->get('http://www.someUrl.com');
$statusCode = $response->getStatusCode();
$content = $response->getContent();
} catch(OperationTimedOutException $e) {
// do something
}
Use HTTPFUL
Httpful is a simple, chainable, readable PHP library intended to make speaking HTTP sane. It lets the developer focus on interacting with APIs instead of sifting through curl set_opt pages and is an ideal PHP REST client.
Httpful includes...
Readable HTTP Method Support (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, HEAD, and OPTIONS)
Custom Headers
Automatic "Smart" Parsing
Automatic Payload Serialization
Basic Auth
Client Side Certificate Auth
Request "Templates"
Ex.
Send off a GET request. Get automatically parsed JSON response.
The library notices the JSON Content-Type in the response and automatically parses the response into a native PHP object.
$uri = "https://www.googleapis.com/freebase/v1/mqlread?query=%7B%22type%22:%22/music/artist%22%2C%22name%22:%22The%20Dead%20Weather%22%2C%22album%22:%5B%5D%7D";
$response = \Httpful\Request::get($uri)->send();
echo 'The Dead Weather has ' . count($response->body->result->album) . " albums.\n";

Answer 2

You can use file_get_contents if the fopen wrappers are enabled. See: http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php
If they are not, and you cannot fix that because your host doesn't allow it, cURL is a good method to use.

Answer 3

You can use:
$result = file_get_contents( $url );
http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php