How to get response using cURL in PHP

I want to have a standalone PHP class where I want to have a function which calls an API through cURL and gets the response. Can someone help me in this?

Thanks.

Just use the below piece of code to get the response from restful web service url, I use social mention url.

$response = get_web_page("http://socialmention.com/search?q=iphone+apps&f=json&t=microblogs&lang=fr");
$resArr = array();
$resArr = json_decode($response);
echo "<pre>"; print_r($resArr); echo "</pre>";

function get_web_page($url) {
    $options = array(
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,   // return web page
        CURLOPT_HEADER         => false,  // don't return headers
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,   // follow redirects
        CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS      => 10,     // stop after 10 redirects
        CURLOPT_ENCODING       => "",     // handle compressed
        CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => "test", // name of client
        CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER    => true,   // set referrer on redirect
        CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120,    // time-out on connect
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 120,    // time-out on response
    ); 

    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);

    $content  = curl_exec($ch);

    curl_close($ch);

    return $content;
}

The crux of the solution is setting

CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true

then

$response = curl_exec($ch);

CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER tells PHP to store the response in a variable instead of printing it to the page, so $response will contain your response. Here's your most basic working code (I think, didn't test it):

// init curl object        
$ch = curl_init();
    
// define options
$optArray = array(
    CURLOPT_URL => 'http://www.google.com',
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true
);

// apply those options
curl_setopt_array($ch, $optArray);

// execute request and get response
$result = curl_exec($ch);

If anyone else comes across this, I'm adding another answer to provide the response code or other information that might be needed in the "response".

http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-getinfo.php

// init curl object        
$ch = curl_init();

// define options
$optArray = array(
    CURLOPT_URL => 'http://www.google.com',
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true
);

// apply those options
curl_setopt_array($ch, $optArray);

// execute request and get response
$result = curl_exec($ch);

// also get the error and response code
$errors = curl_error($ch);
$response = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

curl_close($ch);

var_dump($errors);
var_dump($response);

Output:

string(0) ""
int(200)

// change www.google.com to www.googlebofus.co
string(42) "Could not resolve host: www.googlebofus.co"
int(0)

The ultimate curl php function:

function getURL($url,$fields=null,$method=null,$file=null){
	// author	= Ighor Toth <[email protected]>
	// required:
	// 		url 	= include http or https 
	// optionals:
	// 		fields 	= must be array (e.g.: 'field1' => $field1, ...)
	// 		method 	= "GET", "POST"
	// 		file	= if want to download a file, declare store location and file name (e.g.: /var/www/img.jpg, ...)
	// please crete 'cookies' dir to store local cookies if neeeded

	// do not modify below
	$useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko';
	$timeout= 240;
	$dir = dirname(__FILE__);
	$_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] ?? '127.0.0.1';
	$cookie_file    = $dir . '/cookies/' . md5($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) . '.txt';
	$ch = curl_init($url);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);	
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookie_file);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookie_file);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true );
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, "" );
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, true );
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 10 );
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, 'http://www.google.com/');
	if($file!=null){
		if (!curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $file)){ // Handle error
	        	die("curl setopt bit the dust: " . curl_error($ch));
		}
		//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $file);
		$timeout= 3600;
	}
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout );
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $timeout );
	if($fields!=null){
		$postvars = http_build_query($fields); // build the urlencoded data
		if($method=="POST"){
			// set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, count($fields));
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postvars);
		}
		if($method=="GET"){
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'GET');
			$url = $url.'?'.$postvars;
		}
	}
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
	$content = curl_exec($ch);
	if (!$content){
		$error = curl_error($ch);
		$info = curl_getinfo($ch);
		die("cURL request failed, error = {$error}; info = " . print_r($info, true));
	}
	if(curl_errno($ch)){
		echo 'error:' . curl_error($ch);
	} else {
		return $content;        
	}
	curl_close($ch);
}

am using this simple one

´´´´ class Connect {

public $url;
public $path;
public $username;
public $password;

    $ch = curl_init();

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $this->url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$this->username:$this->password");

    //PROPFIND request that lists all requested properties.
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "PROPFIND");
    $response = curl_exec($ch);

    curl_close($ch);