Post to another page within a PHP script

Question

Hello! How can I make a post request to another php page withing a php script? I have one front end computer as the html page server, but when the user clicks a button, I want a backend server to do the processing and then send the information back to the front end server to show the user. I was saying that I can have a php page on the back end computer and it will send the information back to the front end. So once again, how can I do a POST request to another php page, from a php page?

Thanks

Answer 1

For PHP processing, look into cURL. It will allow you to call pages on your back end and retrieve data from it. Basically you would do something like this:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$fetch_url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt ($ch,CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent;
curl_setopt ($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,60);
$response = curl_exec ( $ch );
curl_close($ch);

You can also look into the PHP HTTP Extension.

Answer 2

Possibly the easiest way to make PHP perform a POST request is to use cURL, either as an extension or simply shelling out to another process. Here's a post sample:

//where are we posting to?
$url = 'http://foo.com/script.php';

//what post fields?
$fields = array(
   'field1'=>$field1,
   'field2'=>$field2
);

//build the urlencoded data
$postvars='';
$sep='';
foreach($fields as $key=>$value) 
{ 
   $postvars.= $sep.urlencode($key).'='.urlencode($value); 
   $sep='&'; 
}


//open connection
$ch = curl_init();

//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,count($fields));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$postvars);

//execute post
$result = curl_exec($ch);

//close connection
curl_close($ch);

Also check out Zend_Http set of classes in the Zend framework, which provides a pretty capable HTTP client written directly in PHP (no extensions required).

Answer 3

Assuming your php install has the CURL extension, it is probably the easiest way (and most complete, if you wish).

Sample snippet:

//set POST variables
$url = 'http://domain.com/get-post.php';
$fields = array(
                      'lname'=>urlencode($last_name),
                      'fname'=>urlencode($first_name),
                      'email'=>urlencode($email)
               );

//url-ify the data for the POST
foreach($fields as $key=>$value) { $fields_string .= $key.'='.$value.'&'; }
rtrim($fields_string,'&');

//open connection
$ch = curl_init();

//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST, count($fields));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields_string);

//execute post
$result = curl_exec($ch);

//close connection
curl_close($ch);

Credits go to http://php.dzone.com. Also, don't forget to visit the appropriate page(s) in the PHP Manual

Answer 4

1. Like the rest of the users say it is easiest to do this with CURL.

2. If curl isn't available for you then maybe http://netevil.org/blog/2006/nov/http-post-from-php-without-curl

3. If that isn't possible you could write sockets yourself http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2008/06/how-to-post-an.html

Answer 5

CURL method is very popular so yes it is good to use it. You could also explain more those codes with some extra comments because starters could understand them.