How to Post JSON Data using cURL in PHP
Table of Contents
JSON is the most popular data format on the web because it is natively supported in JavaScript and human-readable.
As such, many APIs support the ability to send and receive JSON data.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to send JSON data to a URL using cURL in PHP.
Sending JSON Data to a URL
To send JSON data to a URL, first let's define the array we want to send:
PHP$data = [
'name' => 'John Doe',
'age' => 30
];
Now let's encode the array as JSON:
PHP$json = json_encode($data);
Not that we have our JSON, let's initialize a cURL request:
PHP$ch = curl_init();
Now let's apply a few options:
PHPcurl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://example.com/api');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $json);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
'Content-Type: application/json',
'Content-Length: ' . strlen($json)
]);
Finally, let's execute the request:
PHP$output = curl_exec($ch);
Now, we can close the cURL request:
PHPcurl_close($ch);
Taken all together, we can write a reusable function for this:
PHP$data = [
'name' => 'John Doe',
'age' => 30
];
function post_json($url, $data) {
$json = json_encode($data);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $json);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
'Content-Type: application/json',
'Content-Length: ' . strlen($json)
]);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $output;
}
$output = post_json('https://example.com/api', $data);
echo $output;
Conclusion
In this post, we learned how to send JSON data to a URL using cURL in PHP.
Simply initialize a new cURL request, apply a few options, and execute the request with the given url and data.
Thanks for reading!
Then, we can close the cURL request and return the output.
- How to Install Node on Windows, macOS and Linux
- Getting Started with Svelte
- Best Visual Studio Code Extensions for 2022
- How to deploy a Deno app using Docker
- Getting Started with Deno
- How to deploy a MySQL Server using Docker
- How to deploy a Node app using Docker
- How to Scrape the Web using Node.js and Puppeteer
- Getting Started with Handlebars.js
- Learn how to build a Slack Bot using Node.js
- Setting Up Stylus CSS Preprocessor
- Getting Started with Vuex: Managing State in Vue