Make a POST request - php

Question

I would like to know how to make a HTTP POST request like it's described there http://code.google.com/apis/documents/docs/3.0/developers_guide_protocol.html#UploadingMetadata (Creating an empty document).
My code looks like this:
<?php
$headers = array(
"POST /feeds/default/private/full HTTP/1.1",
"Host: docs.google.com",
"GData-Version: 3.0",
"Content-Length: 287",
"Content-Type: application/atom+xml"
);
$data = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>";
$data .= "<entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>";
$data .= "<category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind'";
$data .= "term='http://schemas.google.com/docs/2007#document'/>";
$data .= "<title>new document</title>";
$data .= "</entry>";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://google.com/docs/feeds/default/private/full");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
print_r($result);
?>
What's wrong there? Am I doing request correctly?

Answer 1

$data = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>";
Replace with:
$data = "<"."?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?".">";
And...
$data .= "term='http://schemas.google.com/docs/2007#document'/>";
With:
$data .= " term='http://schemas.google.com/docs/2007#document'/>";
Oh and finally, you shouldn't be print_ring the result; print_r is for arrays and objects, not strings (curl_exec returns a string or null/false), instead use var_dump($result);

Answer 2

Further, your custom headers look weird:
POST is not a header at all so that's plain wrong.
Host: is added by curl itself, no point in setting that.
Content-Length: is done by curl itself, you mostly risk confusing curl if you get it wrong.