How to save curl_exec result into variable in Laravel

Question

I'm new to Laravel. Trying to work with external API.

In controller i wont just to make variable with json:

 $testapi = new TestApi();
 $data['books'] = $testapi->books();
 return view('books.index', $data);

In model (just php class without any extends) this:

public function books()
{
    $curl = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $this->host."/books");
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $this->headers);
    $result = curl_exec($curl);
    $result = json_decode($result);
    curl_close($curl);

    return $result;
}

But json content is placed at the beggining of HTML file, even before META information. curl_exec don't save result to variable, but transfer it to global result. How to save this json to variable and then use inside template?

Answer 1

I believe you're missing

curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,TRUE);

that will allow the return to be put into your $result variable, instead of outputting directly.