How should I format a curl for a HTTP request in PHP?

Question

I know there is an library made by an individual (https://github.com/tgallice/wit-php). However, I can't find how he formatted the curl. I only want to do one request, so using his library would be overkill.

Here is the string that works in terminal, but I'm not sure how to write in PHP: curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESSCODE' 'https://api.wit.ai/message?v=20160526&q=mycarisbroken'

$ch1 = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_URL,"https://api.wit.ai/message?v=20160526&q=my%20car%20doesnt%20work");
curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
// curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$vars);  //Post Fields
curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$headers = [
    'Authorization: Bearer ACCESSCODEOMITTED',
];

curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, false);
$server_output = curl_exec ($ch1);
curl_close($ch1);
Data::$answer = json_decode($server_output)['entities']['intent'][0]['value'];

@HassanAhmed I don't know what the -H is, so that link doesn't help much — user7391050, Mar 01 '17 at 19:55
the -H flag in curl represent the header you are sending to server — hassan, Mar 01 '17 at 19:56
@HassanAhmed I still can't get it right, not sure if this is a GET or a POST. Where would the header go in a curl? — user7391050, Mar 01 '17 at 20:06
by default curl command request type is GET , as long as you didn't defined it as POST — hassan, Mar 01 '17 at 20:11
@HassanAhmed I updated my question with the code I'm trying, but this is not working — user7391050, Mar 01 '17 at 20:14
after executing your function on my machine i got a response `"error" : "Bad auth, check token/params",` which is mean that your code is working but you need to trace the request and provide more headers and cookies detials — hassan, Mar 01 '17 at 20:29
You might use [curl_error($ch1)](http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-error.php) for getting a better error message — Diogo Sgrillo, Mar 01 '17 at 20:33

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 01 '17 at 21:59

0

The command line you gave will send a GET to the remote server - but in your code you send a POST. Comment out curl_setopt($ch1, CURLOPT_POST, 1); and your PHP code will do exactly what the command line does.

answered Mar 01 '17 at 21:59

symcbean

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 01 '17 at 22:06

You can try using this PHP library https://github.com/php-curl-class/php-curl-class. Basically it wraps all of php curl functions to class. You can easily create mocks of your implementation afterwards and write decent unit tests.

Your code should look something like that:

<?php 
$curl = new Curl();
$curl->setHeader('Authorization', 'Bearer ACCESSCODEOMITTED');
$curl->get('htps://api.wit.ai/message?v=20160526&q=mycarisbroken');

if ($curl->error) {
  echo 'Error: ' . $curl->errorCode . ': ' . $curl->errorMessage . "\n";
} else {
  echo 'Response:' . "\n";
  var_dump($curl->response);
}

How should I format a curl for a HTTP request in PHP?

2 Answers2