CURL PHP supports libcurl, a library, created by Daniel Stenberg, that allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols. libcurl currently supports the http, https, ftp, gopher, telnet, dict, file, and ldap protocols. libcurl also supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading (this can also be done with PHP's ftp extension), HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies and user+password authentication. In order to use the CURL functions you need to install the CURL package. PHP requires that you use CURL 7.0.2-beta or higher. PHP will not work with any version of CURL below version 7.0.2-beta. To use PHP's CURL support you must also compile PHP --with-curl[=DIR] where DIR is the location of the directory containing the lib and include directories. In the "include" directory there should be a folder named "curl" which should contain the easy.h and curl.h files. There should be a file named "libcurl.a" located in the "lib" directory. These functions have been added in PHP 4.0.2. Once you've compiled PHP with CURL support, you can begin using the curl functions. The basic idea behind the CURL functions is that you initialize a CURL session using the curl_init, then you can set all your options for the transfer via the curl_exec and then you finish off your session using the curl_close. Here is an example that uses the CURL functions to fetch the PHP homepage into a file: <?php $ch = curl_init ("http://www.php.net/"); $fp = fopen ("php_homepage.txt", "w"); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_exec ($ch); curl_close ($ch); fclose ($fp); ?> curl_init Initialize a CURL session int curl_init string url The curl_init will initialize a new session and return a CURL handle for use with the curl_setopt, curl_exec, and curl_close functions. If the optional url parameter is supplied then the CURLOPT_URL option will be set to the value of the parameter. You can manually set this using the curl_setopt function. <?php $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.zend.com/"); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_exec ($ch); curl_close ($ch); ?> See also: curl_close, curl_setopt curl_setopt Set an option for a CURL transfer bool curl_setopt int ch string option mixed value The curl_setopt function will set options for a CURL session identified by the ch parameter. The option parameter is the option you want to set, and the value is the value of the option given by the option. The value should be a long for the following options (specified in the option parameter): CURLOPT_INFILESIZE: When you are uploading a file to a remote site, this option should be used to tell PHP what the expected size of the infile will be. CURLOPT_VERBOSE: Set this option to a non-zero value if you want CURL to report everything that is happening. CURLOPT_HEADER: Set this option to a non-zero value if you want the header to be included in the output. CURLOPT_NOPROGRESS: Set this option to a non-zero value if you don't want PHP to display a progress meter for CURL transfers PHP automatically sets this option to a non-zero parameter, this should only be changed for debugging purposes. CURLOPT_NOBODY: Set this option to a non-zero value if you don't want the body included with the output. CURLOPT_FAILONERROR: Set this option to a non-zero value if you want PHP to fail silently if the HTTP code returned is greater than 300. The default behaviour is to return the page normally, ignoring the code. CURLOPT_UPLOAD: Set this option to a non-zero value if you want PHP to prepare for an upload. CURLOPT_POST: Set this option to a non-zero value if you want PHP to do a regular HTTP POST. This POST is a normal application/x-www-from-urlencoded kind, most commonly used by HTML forms. CURLOPT_FTPLISTONLY: Set this option to a non-zero value and PHP will just list the names of an FTP directory. CURLOPT_FTPAPPEND: Set this option to a non-zero value and PHP will append to the remote file instead of overwriting it. CURLOPT_NETRC: Set this option to a non-zero value and PHP will scan your ~./netrc file to find your username and password for the remote site that you're establishing a connection with. CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION: Set this option to a non-zero value to follow any "Location: " header that the server sends as a part of the HTTP header (note this is recursive, PHP will follow as many "Location: " headers that it is sent.) CURLOPT_PUT: Set this option a non-zero value to HTTP PUT a file. The file to PUT must be set with the CURLOPT_INFILE and CURLOPT_INFILESIZE. CURLOPT_MUTE: Set this option to a non-zero value and PHP will be completely silent with regards to the CURL functions. CURLOPT_TIMEOUT: Pass a long as a parameter that contains the maximum time, in seconds, that you'll allow the curl functions to take. CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT: Pass a long as a parameter that contains the transfer speed in bytes per second that the transfer should be below during CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_TIME seconds for PHP to consider it too slow and abort. CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_TIME: Pass a long as a parameter that contains the time in seconds that the transfer should be below the CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT for PHP to consider it too slow and abort. CURLOPT_RESUME_FROM: Pass a long as a parameter that contains the offset, in bytes, that you want the transfer to start from. CURLOPT_SSLVERSION: Pass a long as a parameter that contains the SSL version (2 or 3) to use. By default PHP will try and determine this by itself, although, in some cases you must set this manually. CURLOPT_TIMECONDITION: Pass a long as a parameter that defines how the CURLOPT_TIMEVALUE is treated. You can set this parameter to TIMECOND_IFMODSINCE or TIMECOND_ISUNMODSINCE. This is a HTTP-only feature. CURLOPT_TIMEVALUE: Pass a long as a parameter that is the time in seconds since January 1st, 1970. The time will be used as specified by the CURLOPT_TIMEVALUE option, or by default the TIMECOND_IFMODSINCE will be used. The value parameter should be a string for the following values of the option parameter: CURLOPT_URL: This is the URL that you want PHP to fetch. You can also set this option when initializing a session with the curl_init function. CURLOPT_USERPWD: Pass a string formatted in the [username]:[password] manner, for PHP to use for the connection. connection. CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD: Pass a string formatted in the [username]:[password] format for connection to the HTTP proxy. CURLOPT_RANGE: Pass the specified range you want. It should be in the "X-Y" format, where X or Y may be left out. The HTTP transfers also support several intervals, seperated with commas as in X-Y,N-M. CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS: Pass a string containing the full data to post in an HTTP "POST" operation. CURLOPT_REFERER: Pass a string containing the "referer" header to be used in an HTTP request. CURLOPT_USERAGENT: Pass a string containing the "user-agent" header to be used in an HTTP request. CURLOPT_FTPPORT: Pass a string containing the which will be used to get the IP address to use for the ftp "POST" instruction. The POST instruction tells the remote server to connect to our specified IP address. The string may be a plain IP address, a hostname, a network interface name (under UNIX), or just a plain '-' to use the systems default IP address. CURLOPT_COOKIE: Pass a string containing the content of the cookie to be set in the HTTP header. CURLOPT_SSLCERT: Pass a string containing the filename of PEM formatted certificate. CURLOPT_SSLCERTPASSWD: Pass a string containing the password required to use the CURLOPT_SSLCERT certificate. CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE: Pass a string containing the name of the file containing the cookiee data. The cookie file can be in Netscape format, or just plain HTTP-style headers dumped into a file. CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST: Pass a string to be used instead of GET or HEAD when doing an HTTP request. This is useful for doing DELETE or another, more obscure, HTTP request. Don't do this without making sure your server supports the command first. The following options expect a file descriptor that is obtained by using the fopen function: CURLOPT_FILE: The file where the output of your transfer should be placed, the default is STDOUT. CURLOPT_INFILE: The file where the input of your transfer comes from. CURLOPT_WRITEHEADER: The file to write the header part of the output into. CURLOPT_STDERR: The file to write errors to instead of stderr. curl_exec Perform a CURL session bool curl_exec int ch This function is should be called after you initialize a CURL session and all the options for the session are set. Its purpose is simply to execute the predefined CURL session (given by the ch). curl_close Close a CURL session void curl_close int ch This functions closes a CURL session and frees all ressources. The CURL handle, ch, is also deleted. curl_version Return the current CURL version string curl_version The curl_version function returns a string containing the current CURL version.