Post and get result with PHP - php

Question

From a PHP page, I'm trying to POST some data to another PHP page and get data back.
Here is what I currently have:
<?php
// Initialize cURL session
$ch = curl_init('postpage.php');
// Set some options on the session
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array('field1' => 'Andrew'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
// Execute post
$result = curl_exec($ch);
var_dump($result);
// Close the session
curl_close($ch);
?>
and in postpage.php:
<?php
echo 'Receipt of post request. field1:'.$_POST["field1"];
?>
All the var_dump gives me is this:
string(0) ""
Why am I not getting the text back?
Thanks!

Answer 1

The curl executed from your php script is not aware of the current environment, that is, you cannot use relative urls. The url you supply to curl_init must be absolute (i.e. including http://)

Answer 2

If this is indeed the actual initialization you're doing, the error may lie in the arguments of curl_init() which expects a fully qualified URL.
Also, you might want to employ some error diagnostics. curl_exec returns FALSE on failure. The reason why can be determined with curl_error():
$ch = curl_init( ... );
// ... some curl_setopt()
$result = curl_exec($ch);
if ($result === FALSE)
{
die("cURL error: " . curl_error($ch));
}