Passing $_POST values with cURL - php

Question

How do you pass $_POST values to a page using cURL?

Answer 1

Should work fine.
$data = array('name' => 'Ross', 'php_master' => true);
// You can POST a file by prefixing with an # (for <input type="file"> fields)
$data['file'] = '#/home/user/world.jpg';
$handle = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
curl_exec($handle);
curl_close($handle)
We have two options here, CURLOPT_POST which turns HTTP POST on, and CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS which contains an array of our post data to submit. This can be used to submit data to POST <form>s.
It is important to note that curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); takes the $data in two formats, and that this determines how the post data will be encoded.
$data as an array(): The data will be sent as multipart/form-data which is not always accepted by the server.
$data = array('name' => 'Ross', 'php_master' => true);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
$data as url encoded string: The data will be sent as application/x-www-form-urlencoded, which is the default encoding for submitted html form data.
$data = array('name' => 'Ross', 'php_master' => true);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($data));
I hope this will help others save their time.
See:
curl_init
curl_setopt

Answer 2

Ross has the right idea for POSTing the usual parameter/value format to a url.
I recently ran into a situation where I needed to POST some XML as Content-Type "text/xml" without any parameter pairs so here's how you do that:
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0"?><stuff><child>foo</child><child>bar</child></stuff>';
$httpRequest = curl_init();
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-Type: text/xml"));
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($httpRequest, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $xml);
$returnHeader = curl_exec($httpRequest);
curl_close($httpRequest);
In my case, I needed to parse some values out of the HTTP response header so you may not necessarily need to set CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER or CURLOPT_HEADER.

Answer 3

Another simple PHP example of using cURL:
<?php
$ch = curl_init(); // Initiate cURL
$url = "http://www.somesite.com/curl_example.php"; // Where you want to post data
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true); // Tell cURL you want to post something
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "var1=value1&var2=value2&var_n=value_n"); // Define what you want to post
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // Return the output in string format
$output = curl_exec ($ch); // Execute
curl_close ($ch); // Close cURL handle
var_dump($output); // Show output
?>
Instead of using curl_setopt you can use curl_setopt_array.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt-array.php

Answer 4

$query_string = "";
if ($_POST) {
$kv = array();
foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
$kv[] = stripslashes($key) . "=" . stripslashes($value);
}
$query_string = join("&", $kv);
}
if (!function_exists('curl_init')){
die('Sorry cURL is not installed!');
}
$url = 'https://www.abcd.com/servlet/';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, count($kv));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $query_string);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, FALSE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, FALSE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Answer 5

$url='Your url'; // Specify your url
$data= array('parameterkey1'=>value,'parameterkey2'=>value); // Add parameters in key value
$ch = curl_init(); // Initialize cURL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($data));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Answer 6

<?php
function executeCurl($arrOptions) {
$mixCH = curl_init();
foreach ($arrOptions as $strCurlOpt => $mixCurlOptValue) {
curl_setopt($mixCH, $strCurlOpt, $mixCurlOptValue);
}
$mixResponse = curl_exec($mixCH);
curl_close($mixCH);
return $mixResponse;
}
// If any HTTP authentication is needed.
$username = 'http-auth-username';
$password = 'http-auth-password';
$requestType = 'POST'; // This can be PUT or POST
// This is a sample array. You can use $arrPostData = $_POST
$arrPostData = array(
'key1' => 'value-1-for-k1y-1',
'key2' => 'value-2-for-key-2',
'key3' => array(
'key31' => 'value-for-key-3-1',
'key32' => array(
'key321' => 'value-for-key321'
)
),
'key4' => array(
'key' => 'value'
)
);
// You can set your post data
$postData = http_build_query($arrPostData); // Raw PHP array
$postData = json_encode($arrPostData); // Only USE this when request JSON data.
$mixResponse = executeCurl(array(
CURLOPT_URL => 'http://whatever-your-request-url.com/xyz/yii',
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_HTTPGET => true,
CURLOPT_VERBOSE => true,
CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => $requestType,
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $postData,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
"X-HTTP-Method-Override: " . $requestType,
'Content-Type: application/json', // Only USE this when requesting JSON data
),
// If HTTP authentication is required, use the below lines.
CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH => CURLAUTH_BASIC,
CURLOPT_USERPWD => $username. ':' . $password
));
// $mixResponse contains your server response.