How to POST JSON Data With PHP cURL?

Question

Here is my code,

$url = \'url_to_post\';
$data = array(
    \"first_name\" => \"First name\",
    \"last_name\" => \"last name\",
    \"email\"=>\"e         


        

Answer 1

First,

1. always define certificates with CURLOPT_CAPATH option,

2. decide how your POSTed data will be transfered.

1 Certificates

By default:

• CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST == 2 which "checks the existence of a common name and also verify that it matches the hostname provided" and

• CURLOPT_VERIFYPEER == true which "verifies the peer's certificate".

So, all you have to do is:

const CAINFO = SERVER_ROOT . '/registry/cacert.pem';
...
\curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CAINFO, self::CAINFO);

taken from a working class where SERVER_ROOT is a constant defined during application bootstraping like in a custom classloader, another class etc.

Forget things like \curl_setopt($handler, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0); or \curl_setopt($handler, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);.

Find cacert.pem there as seen in this question.

2 POST modes

There are actually 2 modes when posting data:

• the data is transfered with Content-Type header set to multipart/form-data or,

• the data is a urlencoded string with application/x-www-form-urlencoded encoding.

In the first case you pass an array while in the second you pass a urlencoded string.

multipart/form-data ex.:

$fields = array('a' => 'sth', 'b' => 'else');
$ch = \curl_init();
\curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
\curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields);

application/x-www-form-urlencoded ex.:

$fields = array('a' => 'sth', 'b' => 'else');
$ch = \curl_init();
\curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
\curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, \http_build_query($fields));

http_build_query:

Test it at your command line as

user@group:$ php -a
php > $fields = array('a' => 'sth', 'b' => 'else');
php > echo \http_build_query($fields);
a=sth&b=else

The other end of the POST request will define the appropriate mode of connection.