Passing $_POST values with cURL

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.

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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.

1. $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);
   

2. $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

Check out the cUrl PHP documentation page. It will help much more than just with example scripts.