Basic API Usage with PHP

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APIs enable web applications to fetch and send data from external services. In this article, we’ll briefly explain how to retrieve and process API data using PHP.

1. Fetching Data with cURL

cURL is a powerful tool for making API requests in PHP. For example, to retrieve data from an API in JSON format:

PHP

\$url = 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1';
\$ch = curl_init(\$url);
curl_setopt(\$ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
\$response = curl_exec(\$ch);
curl_close(\$ch);

\$data = json_decode(\$response, true);
print_r(\$data);

2. Making API Calls with file_get_contents()

If you prefer not to use cURL, file_get_contents() is another way to fetch API data:

PHP

\$url = 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1';
\$response = file_get_contents(\$url);
\$data = json_decode(\$response, true);
print_r(\$data);

3. Sending Data to an API (POST Request)

To send data to an API, you can use cURL with a POST request:

PHP

\$url = 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts';
\$data = ['title' => 'PHP API Example', 'body' => 'This is a test message', 'userId' => 1];

\$ch = curl_init(\$url);
curl_setopt(\$ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt(\$ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt(\$ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, ['Content-Type: application/json']);
curl_setopt(\$ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode(\$data));

\$response = curl_exec(\$ch);
curl_close(\$ch);

print_r(json_decode(\$response, true));