Curl Script Returning False

Question

I am getting bool(false) when I var_dump $information I can access the API fine via the browser just not via the code below why?

    $json = file_get_contents('API URL');

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $json);  
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "user:pw");
    curl_error($ch);
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    $information = json_decode($result, true);

    var_dump($result);

Answer 1

This line

$json = file_get_contents('API URL');

should be

 $json = 'API_URL';