PHP cURL gives an error but works fine in POSTMAN

Question

I have some problem(s) with PHP cURL. I tried to get data from the API using PHP cURL. This is my cURL code in PHP :

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => "https://www.example.com/dos/AW/API",
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
  CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => "{\"Filter\" : {\"IsActive\" : \"True\",\"OutputSelector\" : \"Name\"}}",
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    "API_ACTION: GetItem",
    "API_KEY: MHlIARzQqxVpOg2dUxH4q9w7bx3pOL6K",
    "Accept: application/json"
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($err) {
  echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
  echo $response;
}

?>

With that code I can get a response but the response contains some errors. I also tried using POSTMAN to check, and the API works fine as I got a successful response with the same data. My question is: "Is there anything wrong with my cURL code that would explain why I got an error when I used cURL and I got successful response in POSTMAN "?

I would appreciate if someone could help me with this. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

given that you aren't showing us the successful postman request, we can't know for sure what errors you make, that said, you are making a couple of obvious mistakes here.

first off, when debugging curl code, use CURLOPT_VERBOSE , it gies you a lot of useful information when debugging your curl requests (and if you did this, you would probably notice how the Postman requests's content-type is completely different from curl's content-type http headers - more on this soon)

second, when you want a POST request, don't use CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST , use CURLOPT_POST .

third, when passing a string to CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, the content-type implicitly becomes Content-Type: application/x-www-urlencoded , unless you override it. and you are obviously NOT sending x-www-urlencoded data, but JSON-encoded data, so your content-type is all wrong, its supposed to be Content-type: application/json

fourth, you can hardcode the json if you want, but the code looks much prettier if you json_encode it

fifth, don't use setopt / setopt_array without checking the return type.

fixing all that, you'll end up with something like:

function ecurl_setopt_array($ch, array $options) {
    if (! curl_setopt_array ( $ch, $options )) {
        throw new \RuntimeException ( 'curl_setopt_array failed. ' . curl_errno ( $ch ) . ': ' . curl_error ( $ch ) );
    }
}

$curl = curl_init ();

ecurl_setopt_array ( $curl, array (
        CURLOPT_URL => "https://www.example.com/dos/AW/API",
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
        CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
        CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
        CURLOPT_VERBOSE => true,
        CURLOPT_POST => true,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode ( array (
                'Filter' => array (
                        'IsActive' => 'True',
                        'OutputSelector' => 'Name' 
                ) 
        ) ),
        CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array (
                "API_ACTION: GetItem",
                "API_KEY: MHlIARzQqxVpOg2dUxH4q9w7bx3pOL6K",
                "Accept: application/json",
                'Content-Type: application/json' 
        ) 
) );

$response = curl_exec ( $curl );
$err = curl_error ( $curl );

curl_close ( $curl );

if ($err) {
    echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
    echo $response;
}

Edit: fixed the json data, when i wrote it, i didn't see that isActive is not an actual boolean, but the string literal True - i mistakenly encoded it as a json boolean true instead, sorry, fixed. (although i suspect it's supposed to be a boolean anyway, and that your original code just encodes it wrong, perhaps you should double check isActive 's type in the api docs, assuming there is one)

Answer 2

@Antonio, Response you are getting is from the other end, might be you are missing something which restrict the processing of query at other end. try to print http_code, or use curl_getinfo to get complete information.

in case of response code is 200, then you may ask from another end to validate the request.

PS: not able to comment because of repo restrictions.