CurlRequest

Making cURL request easy.

The cURL helper class comes with a handy curl function shorthand, that loads and instantiates the helper class automatically and allows you to make cURL request as one-liner commands.

The cURL implementation in PHP has some little known behavioural problems. Sending inputs with the request as an array will automatically change the header content-type to multipart/form-data. While the header can be forced to a different value using the header array, then the actual sending of values will use the multipart/form-data syntax – and that won't work. To get a application/x-www-form-urlencoded header and syntax, the input MUST be sent as a URL-encoded string rather than as an array.

Definition

Name: CurlRequest::request()
Shorthand: curl()->request()
Syntax: Array = curl()->request( String $url [, Array $_options ] );

Description

Make a cURL request using the PHP cURL implementation. cURL can be used to make complex serverside requests, including POST.

Parameters

$url

String The URL to make the request to

$_options

Array Optional array of cURL options

Options

header: The header(s) of the request as an array with fully formed header values.
method: Method of the request – GET (default), POST, PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS, CONNECT (lowercase values allowed)
useragent: User-agent to use for the request
referer: Referer of the request
cookie: Cookie to send along with the request
cookiejar: Cookie jar to send along with the request
inputs: String or array of key/values to send along with the request.
NOTE: Sending values as array will automatically change header content-type to multipart/form-data. Header can be overwritten via header option, but multipart/form-data syntax will still be used for sending values.
debug: Enable debug information – request info will be written into theme/library/debug file and response info will be added to response array

Return values

Array Array containing response values in an Array with these keys:

header

Contains the header information of the response.

body

Contains the response body. This is typically what you are looking for. Equivalent to what you will see in the browser if the request was made directly.

curl_error

Contains any curl error if such occured.

http_code

The http response code of the response – like 200 for success, 404 for not found etc.

last_url

Contains the last accessed url. In some cases the request might be redirected by the receiving server, and the responding url might differ from the requested url. Ie. if your request is redirected to a login page.

cookies

Contains an array of cookies returned with the reponse.

information

Optional index only used when debug option is set. Will contain additional information about response for debugging purposes.

Examples

Plain request

$response = curl()->request("https://janitor.parentnode.dk");

Makes a request to https://janitor.parentnode.dk and returns the response values as an Array.

Request with custom headers

$response = curl()->request("https://janitor.parentnode.dk", [
	"headers" => [
		"Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded", 
		"Authorization: Basic XXX"
	]
]);

Makes a request to https://janitor.parentnode.dk, adding two header values to the request, and returns the response values as an Array.

Dependencies

PHP

curl_init
curl_setopt
curl_exec
curl_error
curl_getinfo
is_string
strtoupper
strlen
substr
fopen
fclose

Janitor

None