What is JSON?
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a text-based, language-independent format for storing and transferring data over a network. JSON reaches from JavaScript and has a syntax analogous to JavaScript but can be used separately from it. JSON is used for client-server communication in mobile and web applications written in many programming languages, including PHP, JavaScript, Python, Java, C++, C#, Go, and many others.
What is PHP Curl Library?
Curl allows you to interact with servers through various types of protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and others. The Libcurl library supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and other HTTP methods, FTP file upload (FTP file upload can also be done with PHP FTP extension), proxy, cookies, user authentication, and HTML forms based upload. PHP Curl library is an extension of PHP that allows making HTTP requests. To use PHP Curl features, you need to install libcurl 7.10.5 or later and compile PHP with Curl support. The behavior of the PHP Curl functions is affected by the curl.cainfo setting in the php.ini file.
How to make POST requests using the PHP Curl Library?
To use the Curl library to send POST requests, you can follow these steps:
- Initialize a Curl session with function curl_init()
- Pass additional parameters wih the curl_setopt() function:
- Target URL with the "CURLOPT_URL" option.
- Additional HTTP headers with the "CURLOPT_HEADER" parameter.
- Data with "CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS" parameter.
- Set the "CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER" to "true" if need to return the string instead of printing it out
- Start a Сurl session with the curl_exec() function
- Close the Сurl session we created with the curl_close() function
- Output the return string