How to switch from POST to GET in PHP CURL

Question

I have tried switching from a previous Post request to a Get request. Which assumes its a Get but eventually does a post.

I tried the following in PHP :

curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, null);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, FALSE);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_HTTPGET, TRUE);

What am I missing?

Additional information: I already have a connection that's setup to do a POST request. That completes successfully but later on when I try to reuse the connection and switch back to GET using the setopts above it still ends up doing a POST internally with incomplete POST headers. The problem is it believes its doing a GET but ends up putting a POST header without the content-length parameter and the connection fails witha 411 ERROR.

Solution 1

Solved: The problem lies here:

I set POST via both _CUSTOMREQUEST and _POST and the _CUSTOMREQUEST persisted as POST while _POST switched to _HTTPGET. The Server assumed the header from _CUSTOMREQUEST to be the right one and came back with a 411.

curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');

Solution 2

Make sure that you're putting your query string at the end of your URL when doing a GET request.

$qry_str = "?x=10&y=20";
$ch = curl_init();

// Set query data here with the URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com/test.php' . $qry_str); 

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 3);
$content = trim(curl_exec($ch));
curl_close($ch);
print $content;

With a POST you pass the data via the CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS option instead of passing it in the CURLOPT__URL.

$qry_str = "x=10&y=20";
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com/test.php');  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 3);

// Set request method to POST
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

// Set query data here with CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $qry_str);

$content = trim(curl_exec($ch));
curl_close($ch);
print $content;

Note from the curl_setopt() docs for CURLOPT_HTTPGET (emphasis added):

[Set CURLOPT_HTTPGET equal to] TRUE to reset the HTTP request method to GET.
Since GET is the default, this is only necessary if the request method has been changed.

Solution 3

Add this before calling curl_exec($curl_handle)

curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'GET');

Solution 4

CURL request by default is GET, you don't have to set any options to make a GET CURL request.

Solution 5

add this based on a condition. Code with this line is a POST request and otherwise It will be GET by default. Also We can add the parameters at the end of the URL even if it is POST request

curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

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Comments

[Jack Goossen]

That's a pretty evil way to set a timeout of 51 seconds!

[RC.]

Nice catch @JackGoossen!