Post data to a specific port using PHP/Curl.

In this article,I will show how to Post data to a specific port using PHP/Curl Method. PHP-curl library can be used to communicate with a specific port under Linux and windows platform.

Example: Send data to Port in PHP.

  <?php
ini_set("display_errors",1);
error_reporting(E_ERROR);

$msg="&command=1";
$url = "http://127.0.0.1:1234";

$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl,  CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $msg);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$response = curl_exec($curl);

if($response!="")
{
$fp = fopen("test.txt","w");
fwrite( $fp, $response);
fclose($fp);
}

curl_close($curl);
?>




Difference between curl and file_get_contents


In this tutorial,I will explain difference between curl and file_get_contents.
PHP offers two main options to get a remote file, curl and file_get_contents. There are many difference between the two.
file_get_contents - It is a function to get the contents of a file
curl - It is a library.curl supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies.
file_get_contents() for a remote file, it is very slow, and does not handle redirects, caching, cookies.
Curl is a much faster alternative to file_get_contents.

cURL Simple Example in PHP:


cURL allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols.
PHP Supports libcurl.

Example:

<?php
        // initialize curl session
        $ch = curl_init();
       
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "example.com");  // set url      
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);//return the transfer as a string
        
        $output = curl_exec($ch);//output string


        // close curl session
        curl_close($ch);     
?>

What is cURL in PHP?

cURL allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols.
PHP Supports libcurl.

Requirements:
In order to use PHP's cURL functions you need to install the libcurl package.PHP 5.0.0 requires a libcurl version 7.10.5 or greater.

cURL Functions:
    curl_close : Close a cURL session.
    curl_errno: Return the last error number.
    curl_error: Return a string containing the last error for the current session.
    curl_exec: Perform a cURL session.
    curl_getinfo: Get information regarding a specific transfer.
    curl_init: Initialize a cURL session.
    curl_setopt_array: Set multiple options for a cURL transfer.
    curl_setopt: Set an option for a cURL transfer.
    curl_version: Gets cURL version information.