Ultimate PHP cURL function example

The ultimate all in one PHP cURL function that saves the hassle of building a requester/setter/getter script that is cURL.

The idea behind the function was to cater for a variety of options whilst still being simple to set and run.

An example of this is a simple GET request that has no authentication, all you need to set is the URL like:

doCurl('https://theurl.com/api/request');

Or you can use the full parameters to set headers, user agents and referrers.

With doCurl() you can:

  1. Send GET, POST and DELETE requests
  2. Set and include headers
  3. Set post fields
  4. Set user agent
  5. Set referrer
  6. Set follow request
  7. Set use SSL
  8. Set connection timeout
  9. Set timeout

Upon a successful response code of 200 the data response will be returned, else an array stating the non 200 response will be returned.

Code Gist:

<?php
function doCurl(string $url, string $type = 'GET', array $headers = [], array $post_fields = [], string $user_agent = '', string $referrer = '', bool $follow = true, bool $use_ssl = false, int $con_timeout = 10, int $timeout = 40)
{
    $crl = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, $type);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_REFERER, $referrer);
    if ($type == 'POST') {
        curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
        if (!empty($post_fields)) {
            curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_fields);
        }
    }
    if (!empty($headers)) {
        curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
    }
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, $follow);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $con_timeout);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $timeout);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, $use_ssl);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, $use_ssl);
    curl_setopt($crl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $call_response = curl_exec($crl);
    $http_response_code = curl_getinfo($crl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    curl_close($crl);
    if ($http_response_code == 200) {
        return $call_response;//Return data
    } else {
        return array('http_response_code' => $http_response_code);//Call failed
    }
}