cURL is a library which allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols. Using cURL you can:
- Implement payment gateways’ payment notification scripts.
- Download and upload files from remote servers.
- Login to other websites and access members only sections.
PHP cURL library is definitely the odd man out. Unlike other PHP libraries where a whole plethora of functions is made available, PHP cURL wraps up major parts of its functionality in just four functions.
A typical PHP cURL usage follows the following sequence of steps.
curl_init – Initializes the session and returns a cURL handle which can be passed to other cURL functions.
curl_opt – This is the main work horse of cURL library. This function is called multiple times and specifies what we want the cURL library to do.
curl_exec – Executes a cURL session.
curl_close – Closes the current cURL session.
Ravi Dhavlesha 