How to send array with CURL? Should I `urlencode` it?

Question

When I assign an array of data to be POSTed as a cURL option (via CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS), do I need to urlencode that data first or will that be taken care of?

Answer 1

The C implementation of curl_setopt doesn't seem to URL-encode the text. However, in PHP5, the http_build_query function returns a query string representation of the array that is URL-encoded.

Example Usage

  $curl_parameters = array(
    'param1' => $param1,
    'param2' => $param2
  );

  $curl_options = array(
    CURLOPT_URL => "http://localhost/service",
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => http_build_query( $curl_parameters ),
    CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => 1.0,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HEADER => false
  );

  $curl = curl_init();
  curl_setopt_array( $curl, $curl_options );
  $result = curl_exec( $curl );

  curl_close( $curl );

Answer 2

POST data is not added to the URL (like GET) so you don't need to URLencode it.

Answer 3

I use:

curl_setopt($curl , CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $array );

instead of:

curl_setopt($curl , CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($array)  );

Answer 4

One problem with using an array for CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS is that you can't have a name-value pair with an empty value.

Answer 5

You don't have to urlencode first. However, it is important to realize that passing an array will make cURL send it as multipart/form-data, which explains why it is does not need to get urlencoded (by neither you nor cURL), and you need to use an array if you want to upload files. If you http_build_query() first (and send it as a string) it will be treated as application/x-www-form-urlencoded.