Handling PUT/DELETE arguments in PHP

Question

I am working on my and I am struggling to work out how to send PUT and DELETE arguments in PHP.

In a few places I have seen people using the options:

$this->option(CURLOPT_PUT, TRUE);
$this->option(CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $params);

Annoyingly, this seems to do nothing. Is this the correct way to set PUT parameters?

If so, how do I set DELETE parameters?

*$this->option() is part of my library, it simply builds up an array of CURLOPT_XX constants and sends them to curl_setopt_array() when the built up cURL request is executed.*

I am attempting to read PUT and DELETE parameters using the following code:

        case 'put':
            // Set up out PUT variables
            parse_str(file_get_contents('php://input'), $this->_put_args);
        break;

        case 'delete':
            // Set up out PUT variables
            parse_str(file_get_contents('php://input'), $this->_delete_args);
        break;

There are two options here, I am approaching this in the wrong way or there is a bug somewhere in my libraries. If you could let me know if this should theoretically work I can just hammer away on debug until I solve it.

I dont want to waste any more time on an approach that is fundamentally wrong.

Answer 1

I think you're mixing your verbs - PUT is for putting a file, POST is for posting variables (although you can POST a file).

To set the post variables, use CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS with either a string of param1=val1&param2=val2 or an associative array.

To do a DELETE, you'll want to use the curl option CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST

Answer 2

Instead of using CURLOPT_PUT = TRUE use CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST = 'PUT' and CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST = 'DELETE' then just set values with CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS.

Works perfectly!

Answer 3

Just remember, most webservers do not handle PUT & DELETE requests. Since you're making a library, I'd suggest thinking about accounting for this. Typically, there are two conventions you can use to mimic PUT & DELETE via POST.

1. use a custom POST variable (ex. _METHOD=PUT) which overrides POST
2. set a custom HTTP header (ex. X-HTTP-Method-Override: PUT)

Generally speaking, most RESTful services that don't allow PUT & DELETE directly will support at least one of those strategies. You can use cURL to set a custom header if you need via the CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER option.

// ex...
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('X-HTTP-Method-Override: PUT') );