basic cURL API connection with PHP<\/a> is a better fit for your needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPHP cURL setup<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Implementing an external API into your project is probably going to take more than just one API call and from different pages in your project. This is why I’ve created a ‘simple’ PHP script that allows us to call this function, with a set of parameters, and a cURL request will be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Make sure to put this code into a file or place that can be accessed by your entire app or website. (I’ve updated this function so we’ll be able to define the headers when we’re making the call. I’ve added a section for custom headers at the bottom!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nfunction callAPI($method, $url, $data){\n $curl = curl_init();\n switch ($method){\n case \"POST\":\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1);\n if ($data)\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);\n break;\n case \"PUT\":\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, \"PUT\");\n if ($data)\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\n break;\n default:\n if ($data)\n $url = sprintf(\"%s?%s\", $url, http_build_query($data));\n }\n \/\/ OPTIONS:\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(\n 'APIKEY: 111111111111111111111',\n 'Content-Type: application\/json',\n ));\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);\n \/\/ EXECUTE:\n $result = curl_exec($curl);\n if(!$result){die(\"Connection Failure\");}\n curl_close($curl);\n return $result;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThis is a basic setup for doing a cURL call and I’m using a switch<\/code> statement to check if the API call will be a POST, PUT, or something else (get or delete). I’ll go deeper into the switch case while we’re doing the specific requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI’m using if-statements<\/code> inside the switch-case<\/code> to see if we want to provide JSON data into our call or not. For the POST and PUT request the if-statement is not really necessary because we’re only using POST or PUT with data, but it’s an extra security to make sure our call function won’t break.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPHP cURL GET request<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The most simple API call is the GET call, so let’s start with that! Our callAPI function expects 3 parameters: $method, $url and $data. We need to give those parameters to all our API calls, so for a cURL GET, we can just set $data on false because we are not passing any data with a GET call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$get_data = callAPI('GET', 'https:\/\/api.example.com\/get_url\/'.$user['User']['customer_id'], false);\n$response = json_decode($get_data, true);\n$errors = $response['response']['errors'];\n$data = $response['response']['data'][0];<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n$get_data already returns all the data we want from the API in a json string. I’m using $response to convert the json string back to a usable PHP array. You can skip those steps if you want, this is my personal preference. I’m also using the extra $errors and $data arrays to store the actual data and errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PHP cURL POST request<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Obviously, a POST request does require data. Make sure your json-data is correct, otherwise the request will keep returning errors. Although… If we receive errors from the API, that means our calls are working \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my example I’m using the CakePHP syntax for setting up my json array, so don’t mind that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$data_array = array(\n \"customer\" => $user['User']['customer_id'],\n \"payment\" => array(\n \"number\" => $this->request->data['account'],\n \"routing\" => $this->request->data['routing'],\n \"method\" => $this->request->data['method']\n ),\n);\n$make_call = callAPI('POST', 'https:\/\/api.example.com\/post_url\/', json_encode($data_array));\n$response = json_decode($make_call, true);\n$errors = $response['response']['errors'];\n$data = $response['response']['data'][0];<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nBecause we’re doing an API call with json data, I’m converting my PHP array to a json string with json_encode($data_array);<\/code>. The response will come in as a json string again, so I’m using json_decode($make_call, true);<\/code> to convert the json string back to a usable PHP array. Same as we did in our GET call, so you can skip these steps again if you don’t need them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPHP cURL PUT request<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The PUT request is almost the same as the POST request. I had a hard time figuring out how to pass data into a PUT call. If we take a look at our callAPI() function, you see that I changed some things up between the PUT and the POST request. We can still use the same parameters in our callAPI() function as always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$data_array = array(\n \"amount\" => (string)($lease['amount'] \/ $tenant_count)\n);\n$update_plan = callAPI('PUT', 'https:\/\/api.example.com\/put_url\/'.$lease['plan_id'], json_encode($data_array));\n$response = json_decode($update_plan, true);\n$errors = $response['response']['errors'];\n$data = $response['response']['data'][0];<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nPHP cURL DELETE request<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The delete request is very simple again. We can just hit the API url with the $id we want to remove and poof… it’s gone forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
callAPI('DELETE', 'https:\/\/api.example.com\/delete_url\/' . $id, false);<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nIn the beginning we defined our callAPI function with preset headers. But what if we, for some reason, need to change the headers a bit for another call? We don’t want to write a whole new callAPI function just to edit some headers. Therefore, here’s an option on how to make the preset headers flexible:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
function callAPI($method, $url, $data, $headers = false){\n $curl = curl_init();\n switch ($method){\n ...\n }\n \/\/ OPTIONS:\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);\n if(!$headers){\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(\n 'APIKEY: 111111111111111111111',\n 'Content-Type: application\/json',\n ));\n }else{\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(\n 'APIKEY: 111111111111111111111',\n 'Content-Type: application\/json',\n $headers\n ));\n }\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);\n curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);\n \/\/ EXECUTE:\n ...\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThere are 2 differences here from our first function. 1: We’ve added an extra parameter in our function to define if we want to use a custom header or not. I put it to $headers = false<\/code> to give it a default value. Now we’re not required to enter our headers with every call.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe second change is the if-statement when we’re setting the API headers. If we didn’t give in any headers when we make the call, it’s going to use our default headers instead of crashing. Now we’re ready to add custom headers with our call!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this example, I’m using search parameters to search for specific data before I’ll pull in all the data with the API. To make the search, I obviously need to be able to add my search query into my callAPI headers. Here’s my example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"REST](\"https:\/\/old.weichie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/curl_api_calls.jpg\")
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