connecting to volusion store using curl functions - php

Question

I have volusion store URL and I am connecting to volusion store using this URL and curl function. Following is my code to connect -
$URL
='http://v970032.y5pgm9yfhypo.demo17.volusion.com/net/WebService.aspx?Login=rashmi#edreamz.in&EncryptedPassword=24EA69124482A486AF3E6BA68DDEECBB7CBC3661EA792E0DC4A40CD6FC031E6E&Import=Update';
$ch = curl_init($URL);
I just want to check whether the connection for the given URL is connected or not. How can I achieve this please advise me. Right now if I used -
echo $ch
it is only displaying Resource id #2
thanks in advance.

Answer 1

First, curl_init ins't enough. You'll need to use curl_exec to actually send the request. Once the request is sent, you can use curl_errno to check if an error was returned and curl_getinfo to get more information about the request and response such as the HTTP response code (e.g.: 200, 404), how long it took to connect, etc.
Modified example from the curl_getinfo documentation:
<?php
// Create a curl handle
$ch = curl_init('http://v970032.y5pgm9yfhypo.demo17.volusion.com/net/WebService.aspx?Login=rashmi#edreamz.in&EncryptedPassword=24EA69124482A486AF3E6BA68DDEECBB7CBC3661EA792E0DC4A40CD6FC031E6E&Import=Update');
// Tell cURL to return the transfer instead of outputting it.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
// Execute
$result = curl_exec($ch);
// Check if any error occured
if (!curl_errno($ch)) {
// Here, I'm outputting the value of $result but you can do whatever you'd like
// with it such as using a DOMDocument to parse XML or HTML, json_decode to
// parse JSON, etc.
echo $result;
} else {
echo 'Sorry, an error occurred while connecting to Volusion.';
}
// Close handle
curl_close($ch);
Depending on what you're trying to do, you might want to have a look at curl_setopt and more specifically at CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER and some of the other basic options you can pass to cURL. The options are well documented.