PHP Cookbook

11.2. Fetching a URL with the POST Method

Problem

You want to retrieve a URL with the POST method, not the default GET method. For example, you want to submit an HTML form.

Solution

Use the cURL extension with the CURLOPT_POST option set:

$c = curl_init('http://www.example.com/submit.php');
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'monkey=uncle&rhino=aunt');
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$page = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);

If the cURL extension isn’t available, use the PEAR HTTP_Request class:

require 'HTTP/Request.php';

$r = new HTTP_Request('http://www.example.com/submit.php');
$r->setMethod(HTTP_REQUEST_METHOD_POST);
$r->addPostData('monkey','uncle');
$r->addPostData('rhino','aunt');
$r->sendRequest();
$page = $r->getResponseBody();

Discussion

Sending a POST method request requires special handling of any arguments. In a GET request, these arguments are in the query string, but in a POST request, they go in the request body. Additionally, the request needs a Content-Length header that tells the server the size of the content to expect in the request body.

Because of the argument handling and additional headers, you can’t use fopen( ) to make a POST request. If neither cURL nor HTTP_Request are available, use the pc_post_request( ) function, shown in Example 11-1, which makes the connection to the remote web server with fsockopen( ) .

Example 11-1. pc_post_request( )

function pc_post_request($host,$url,$content='') { $timeout = 2; ...